WORLD REVOLUTION 

THE PLOT AGAINST CIVILIZATION 



BY 

NESTA H. WEBSTER 

(MRS. ARTHUR WEBSTER) 

AUTHOR OF "THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: A STUDY TO DEMOCRACY** 
"THE CHEVALIER DE BOUFFLERS," BTC. 




BOSTON 
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



k 



^ 



<l>" 



" Si les hommes comprenaient la revolution aujourd'hui, 

elle finirait demain." 

Joseph de Maistre in 1811. 



" Les personnes qui ignorent la veritable situation des 
choses, et le nombre en est grand, s'imaginent que les 
societes secretes ont pour objet l'alliance des peuples contre 
les rois; c'est une erreur capitale. Les societes secretes 
sont ennemies des uns et des autres; elles flattent les 
passions, elles excitent les divisions, les haines, les ven- 
geances; mais c'est a leur profit, ou plutdt a celui de 
quelques ambitieux qui ne voudraient d6tr6ner les rois que 
pour mieux opprimer les sujets." 

Lombard de Langres in 1819. 



Printed in the United States oi America 



OCT 21 '2 1 



Copyright, 1921 

BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
(Incorporated) 



©CLA624887 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

In reply to numerous enquiries as to whether the 
statements I made in The French Revolution have since 
been disproved, I take this opportunity to say that, 
as far as I am aware, no one has attempted to bring 
forward any contrary evidence. The Socialist press was 
completely silent, whilst hostile reviewers in the general 
press contented themselves with saying the work was 
" biassed," but without quoting chapter and verse in 
support of this assertion. My book was not intended to 
be the last word on the French Revolution, but the first 
attempt, in English, to tell the truth, and had my view 
on any essential point been shown to be erroneous, I 
should have been perfectly ready to readjust it in further 
editions. No such honest challenge was made, however; 
my opponents preferring the method of creating prejudice 
against my work by attributing to me views I never 
expressed. Thus, at the moment of this book going to 
press, it has been brought to my notice that I am repre- 
sented as having attacked British Freemasonry. This 
can only have been said in malice, as I have always clearly 
differentiated between British and Continental masonry, 
showing the former to be an honourable association not 
only hostile to subversive doctrines but a strong supporter 
of law, order, and religion. (See The French Revolution, 
pp. 20 and 492.) I am in fact indebted to certain dis- 
tinguished British masons for valuable help and advice 
in my work, which I here gratefully acknowledge. 



FOREWORD 

Amongst all the books, pamphlets, and newspaper 
articles that are now devoted to the World Revolution 
through which we are passing, it is strange to notice how 
little scientific investigation is being brought to bear on 
the origins of the movement. A frequent explanation 
advanced, and, I believe, the most fallacious, is that the 
present unrest must be attributed to " war weariness." 
Human nature, we are told, exasperated by the pro- 
tracted horror of the recent international conflict, has 
become the victim of a crise de nerfs which finds its 
expression in world-wide discontent. In support of this 
theory we are reminded that former wars have likewise 
been followed by periods of social disturbance, and that 
by a process of analogy the symptoms may be expected 
to subside as the strain of war is relieved, in the same 
manner as they have subsided hitherto. It is true that 
political conflicts between nations have frequently in the 
past been followed by social upheavals — the Napoleonic 
Wars by industrial troubles in England, the Franco- 
Prussian War by revolutionary agitation not only in the 
land of the conquered, but of the conquerors — but to 
regard these social manifestations as the direct outcome 
of the preceding international conflict is to mistake con- 
tributing for fundamental causes. Revolution is not the 
product of war, but a malady that a nation suffering from 
the after-effects of a war is most likely to develop, just as 
a man enfeebled by fatigue is more liable to contract 
disease than one who is in a state of perfect vigour. 

Yet this predisposing cause is by no means essential 
to the outbreak of revolutionary fever. The great French 
Revolution was not immediately preceded by a war of 
any magnitude, and to the observant mind England in 
1914 was as near to revolution as in 1919. The intervening 
World War, far from producing the explosion in this 
country, merely retarded it by rallying citizens of all 
classes around the standard of national defence. 

vii 



viii WORLD REVOLUTION 

The truth is that for the last one hundred and forty- 
five years the fire of revolution has smouldered steadily 
beneath the ancient structure of civilization, and already 
at moments has burst out into flame threatening to destroy 
to its very foundations that social edifice which eighteen 
centuries have been spent in constructing. The crisis of 
today is then no development of modern times, but a 
mere continuation of the immense movement that began 
in the middle of the eighteenth century. In a word, it is 
all one and the same revolution — the revolution that 
found its first expression in France of 1789. Both in its 
nature and its aims it differs entirely from former revolu- 
tions which had for their origin some localized or tem- 
porary cause. The revolution through which we are now 
passing is not local but universal, it is not political but 
social, and its causes must be sought not in popular dis- 
content, but in a deep-laid conspiracy that uses the 
people to their own undoing. 

In order to follow its course we must realize the dual 
nature of the movement by studying concurrently the 
outward revolutionary forces of Socialism, Anarchism, 
etc., and the hidden power behind them as indicated in 
the chart accompanying this work. The present writer 
believes that hitherto no book has been written on pre- 
cisely these lines ; many valuable works have been devoted 
to secret societies, others to the surface history of revolu- 
tion, but none so far has attempted to trace the connec- 
tion between the two in the form of a continuous narrative. 
The object of this book is therefore to describe not only 
the evolution of Socialist and Anarchist ideas and their 
effects in succeeding revolutionary outbreaks, but at the 
same time to follow the workings of that occult force, 
terrible, unchanging, relentless, and wholly destructive, 
which constitutes the greatest menace that has ever 
confronted the human race. 

Parts of Chapters I and III appeared in The Nine- 
teenth Century and After, and certain later passages in 
The Morning Post. 



CONTENTS 
CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Illuminism ...... 1 

The Philosophers — Rousseau — Secret Societies — Free- 
masonry- — Adam Weishaupt — The Illuminati — Congress of 
Wilhelmsbad — Illuminati suppressed. 

CHAPTER II 
Thb First French Revolution . . .27 

Illuminism in France — Cagliostro — Mirabeau — Intrigues of 
Prussia — The Orl^anistes — The Reign of Terror — Clootz and 
Internationalism — Robespierre and Socialism — The plan of 
depopulation — After-effects of Revolution. 

CHAPTER III 
The Conspiracy op Babeuf . . . .53 

Gracchus Babeuf — The Panth£onistes — Manifesto of the 
Equals — System of Babeuf — Plan of the Conspirators — The 
Great Day of the People — Discovery of the Plot — Execution 
of Babouvistes — Illuminism in England — Ireland — The United 
Irishmen — Bantry Bay^-IUuminism in America. 



CHAPTER IV 
The Growth op Socialism . . . .84 

Revival of Illuminism — The Tugendbund — The Alta Vendita 
— The Industrial Revolution — Role of the Jews — The Philos- 
ophers — Robert Owen — " New Harmony " — Saint-Simon — 
Pierre Leroux — Fourier— Buchez — Louis Blanc — Cabet — Vidal 
— Pecqueur — Proudhon — Trade-Union Terrorism. 



x WORLD REVOLUTION 

CHAPTER V 

PACK 

The Revolution of 1848 .... 126 

Russian Secret Societies — The Dekabrist Rising — The 
French Revolution of 1830 — The bourgeoisie before 1848— 
The Secret Societies — Apathy of the Government — The out- 
break of February — Fall of the Monarchy — The Social Demo- 
cratic Republic — National workshops — Associations of working- 
men— The 17th of March— The 16th of April— The 15th of May 
— The days of June — Reaction — The European conflagration. 

CHAPTER VI 

The Internationale ..... 160 

R61e of the Jews in Germany— German Social Democracy — 
Lassalle — Karl Marx — Engels — Russian Anarchy — Michel 
Bakunin — " The Working-Men's Association" — Intrigues of 
Marx — The " Alliance of Social Democracy " — Bakunin and 
the " German- Jew Company." 



CHAPTER VII 

The Revolution op 1871 . . . .197 

The Franco-Prussian War — Internationalism — Karl Marx, 
pan-Germanist — The Commune — Conflict between Marx and 
Bakunin — End of the Internationale. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Course op Anarchy . . . .221 

Nihilism in Russia — Murder of Alexander II. — The revived 
Illuminati — Johann Most — Revolutionary Congress in London 
— Anarchist outrages in Western Europe — Fenianism — British 
Socialism. 



CHAPTER IX 

Syndicalism ...... 249 

Quarrels amongst Socialists — The old Guilds — Revolutionary 
Syndicalism — Outcome of Anarchy — The General Strike — 
Georges Sorel — Syndicalism versus Socialism — Guild Socialism 
— " New Australia." 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

The Revolution of 1917 . . .277 

The Great War — R61e of British Socialists — R61e of German 
Social Democrats — The Russian Revolution — Bolshevism — 
Roleof the Jews — The Protocolsof Nilus — German organization. 

CONCLUSION . . .318 

Bolshevism in England — Our Illuminati — Danger now 
threatening civilization — Methods of defence. 



CHAPTER I. 

ILLUMINISM 

The Philosophers — Rousseau — Secret Societies — Freemasonry — Adam 
Weishaupt — The Illuminati — Congress of Wilhelmsbad — Illumi- 
nati suppressed. 

It is a commonly accepted opinion that the great 
revolutionary movement which began at the end of the 
eighteenth century originated with the philosophers of 
France, particularly with Rousseau. This is only to state 
half the case; Rousseau was not the originator of his 
doctrines, and if we were to seek the cause of revolution in 
mere philosophy it would be necessary to go a great deal 
further back than Rousseau — to Mably, to the Utopia of 
Thomas More, and even to Pythagoras and Plato. 

At the same time it is undoubtedly true that Rousseau 
was the principal medium through which the doctrines of 
these earlier philosophers were brought home to the 
intelligentzia of eighteenth century France, and that his 
Contrat Social and Discours sur Vorigine de VinegaliU parmi 
les hommes contained the germs of modern Socialism in 
all its forms. The theory of Rousseau that has the most 
important bearing on the theme of this book might be 
expressed in the colloquial phrase that "Civilization is all 
wrong" and that salvation for the human race lies in a 
return to nature. According to Rousseau, civilization had 
proved the bane of humanity ; in his primitive state Man 
was free arid happy, only under the paralysing influence of 
social restraints had his liberty been curtailed, whilst to the 
laws of property alone was due the fact that a large propor- 
tion of mankind had fallen into servitude. "The first man 
who bethought himself of saying This is mine,' and found 

1 




2 WORLD REVOLUTION 

people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of 
civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what 
miseries and horrors would he have spared the human race 
who, snatching away the spades and filling in the ditches, 
had cried out to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this 
impostor; you are lost if you forget that;the fruits of the 
earth belong to all and the earth to no one.' "* In these 
words the whole principle of Communism is to be found. 

There is a certain substratum of truth in Rousseau's 
indictment of civilization — a substratum common to all 
dangerous errors. For if there were no truth at the bottom 
of false philosophies they would obtain no credence, and 
thus could never constitute a menace to the world. 
Rousseau's gigantic error was to argue that because there 
are certain evils attendant on civilization therefore civili- 
zation is wrong from the beginning. As well might one 
point to a neglected patch in a garden and say: "See the 
results of cultivation!" In order to remedy the evils of 
the existing social system more civilization, not less, is 
needed. Civilization in its higher aspects, not in the mere 
acquisition of the physical amenities of life, or even of 
artistic and scientific knowledge, but in the sphere of 
moral aspiration is all that separates Man from the brute. 
Destroy civilization in its entirety and the human race 
sinks to the level of the jungle in which the only law is 
that of the strong over the weak, the only incentive the 
struggle for material needs. For although Rousseau's 
injunction, "Go back into the woods and become men!" 
may be excellent advice if interpreted as a temporary- 
measure, "go back into the woods and remain there" is a 
counsel for anthropoid apes. 

It would be idle, however, to refute the folly of 
Rousseau's theories, to show that in Nature Communism 
does not exist, that the first creature to establish the law of 
property was not man staking o^fc his claim, but the first 
bird appropriating the branch of a tree whereon to build 
its nest, the first rabbit selecting the spot wherein to 
burrow out his hole — a right that no other bird or rabbit 
has ever dreamt of disputing. 

1 Discours sur Vinegalite des conditions. 



ILLUMINISM 3 

As to the distribution of the "fruits of the earth" one 
has only to watch two thrushes on the lawn disputing over 
a worm to see how the question of food supply is settled in 
primitive society. Nothing could be more absurd than 
Rousseau's conception of ideal barbarians living together 
on the principle of "Do as you would be done by" ; only a 
dreamer utterly unacquainted with the real conditions of 
primitive life — the life of rule by the strongest, of pitiless 
preying on the weak and helpless — could have conjured 
up such a vision. 1 

Even eight eenth-century France, with all its avidity for 
novelty and its dreams of "a return to Nature," never 
regarded the primitive Utopia of Rousseau in the light of 
an attainable ideal, and it is as inconceivable that the 
philosophy of the Discours sur Vinegalite should have led to 
the attempt to overthrow civilization in 1793 as that the 
mockeries of Voltaire should have led to the Feasts of 
Reason and the desecration of the churches. The teaching 
of Rousseau never reached the people to any appreciable 
extent, his influence was confined to the aristocracy and 
bourgeoisie, and it was certainly not the hyper-civilized 
habitues of the salons nor the prosperous bourgeois of the 
provinces, nor indeed was it Rousseau himself, living on 
the bounty of the most dissolute amongst the rich and 
sharing their vices, who would have welcomed a return to 
aboriginal conditions of life. 

The salons toyed with the philosophy of Rousseau as 
they toyed with any new thing — Mesmerism, Martinism, 
Magic — whilst the disgruntled members of the middle 
class who took him seriously used his theories merely as a 
lever for stirring up hatred against the class by which they 
believed themselves to be slighted, and never dreamt of 
emulating the Caribbean savages held up to their admira- 
tion by the exponent of primitive equality. 

1 On the Indian frontier, where still to-day no laws exist, the inhabitants 
are obliged to resort to the plan of building towers reached only by ladders 
wherein to sleep at night, and by ascending into these refuges and pulling 
the ladders up after them they are able to slumber in comparative security 
from assassination. Equality- of wealth is maintained by the same primi- 
tive methods. "How do you prevent any one getting too rich? " a British 
general inquired of an inhabitant of the Swat Valley, where a rudimentaiy- 
form of Communism is carried out. "We cut his throat," was the brief reply. 



4 WORLD REVOLUTION, 

It is not then to the philosophers, but to the source 
whence they drew many of their inspirations, that the 
great dynamic force of the Revolution must be attributed. 
Rousseau and Voltaire were Freemasons; the Encyclopedic 
was published under the auspices of the same order. 1 
Without this powerful aid the drawing-room doctrinaires 
of the eighteenth century could no more have brought 
about the mighty cataclysm of 1789 than could the Fabian 
Society have produced the world revolution of to-day. 
The organization of the Secret Societies was needed to 
transform the theorizings of the philosophers into a con- 
crete and formidable system for the destruction of civi- 
lization. 

In order to trace the origins of these sects it would be 
necessary to go back quite six centuries before the first 
French Revolution. As early as 1185 an order had been 
formed, calling itself the " Confrererie de la Paix," with the 
main object of putting an end to wars, but also with the 
idea of establishing community of land. In their attacks 
on the nobles and clergy, the Confreres thus expressed their 
belief in the system now known as nationalization: " By 
what right do they invade the goods that should be com- 
mon to all such as the meadows, the woods, the game that 
runs about the fields and forests, the fish that people the 
rivers and the ponds, gifts that Nature destines equally to 
all her children? " Accordingly the Confreres set out to 
destroy the chateaux and monasteries, but the nobles 
arming themselves in self-defence ended by destroying the 
" Confrererie." 2 

It will be seen, therefore, that Rousseau in attacking 
the rights of property was proclaiming a doctrine that had 
not only been preached but which it had actually been 
attempted to put into practice in France 600 years earlier. 

The fact that the Confreres of the twelfth century had 
been thus summarily suppressed did not prevent the for- 
mation of further subversive sects; early in the following 
century came the Albigeois professing much the same 

1 Martinis de Pasqually, by Papus, President of the Supreme Council 
of the Martiniste Order (1895), p. 146. 

2 Recherches politiques et historiques, by the Chevalier de Malet (1817), 
p. 17. 



ILLUMINISM 5 

doctrines; in 1250 a Hungarian ex-priest named Jacobi 
organized a crusade against the priests and nobles, and at 
about the same date the order of the Templars was founded 
in Jerusalem by certain gentilshommes of Picardy during 
the Crusades. On their return to France the Knights 
Templars instituted themselves as a power independent of 
the Monarchy, and under their Grand Master, Jacques du 
Molay, rose against the authority of the King, Philippe le 
Bel. In 1312 several of their number were arrested and 
accused, amongst other things, of spitting on the crucifix 
and of denying the Christ. In the course of their cross- 
examination they declared that they had not been fully 
initiated into the Statutes of the Order, and that they 
suspected " that there were two sorts, some that were 
shown to the public, others that were carefully hidden and 
were not even known to all the Knights." l 

Jacques du Molay and several of the leaders were 
executed, and, according to the Chevalier de Malet, "those 
who had escaped the storm afterwards met in obscurity so 
as to re-knit the ties that had united them, and in order to 
avoid fresh denunciations they made use of allegorical 
methods which indicated the basis of their association in a 
manner unintelligible to the eyes of the vulgar : that is the 
origin of the Free Masons." 2 

This last assertion finds further confirmation from the 
Martiniste Papus, who explains that the " Grand Chap- 
ter " of French Freemasonry founded in the eighteenth 
century was constituted under the Templars, " that is to 
say that their most eminent members are animated by the 
desire to avenge Jacobus Burgundus Molay and his com- 
panions for the assassination of which they were the vic- 
tims on the part of two tyrannical powers: Royalty and 
Papacy." 3 

Meanwhile Freemasonry in England had developed 

1 Recherches politiques et historiques, by the Chevalier de Malet (1817), 
p. 37. 2 Ibid. p. 39. 

3 Marlines de Pasqually, by Papus, p. 140. In the above passages I 
have only touched very briefly on the origins of Continental masonry, as 
the subject was recently fully dealt with in the very interesting articles 
that appeared in the Morning Post during July 1920 under the title of 
The Cause of World Unrest, and republished in pamphlet form by Grant 
Richards. 



6 WORLD REVOLUTION 

along quite different lines. This is not the place to discuss 
its aims or origins; suffice it to say that although French 
Freemasonry of the Grande Loge Nationale derived from 
one of the same sources — the Confrererie of the Rose 
Croix — and received its first charters from the Grand 
Lodge of London (founded in 1717), the two Orders must 
not be confounded. The craft masonry of Britain, which 
was largely a development of the real guild of working 
masons, has always retained the spirit of brotherly asso- 
ciation and general benevolence which animated its 
founders, and has adhered throughout to the principle that 
" nothing touching religion or government shall ever be 
spoken of in the Lodge." 1 

In France, however, as in other Continental countries, 
the lodges speedily became centres of political intrigue. 
The Grand Orient, founded in 1772, with the Due de 
Chartres (later Philippe Egalite) as its Grand Master, was 
an undeniably subversive body, and by a coalition with the 
Grand Chapter in 1786 acquired a far more dangeroas 
character. For whilst " the spirit of the Grand Orien 4 " was 
frankly democratic (though not demagogic)," the spirit of 
the Grand Chapter was revolutionary, " but the Revolu- 
tion was to be accomplished above all for the benefit of the 
upper class 2 (la haute bourgeoisie), with the people as its 
instrument" The brothers of the Templar rite, that is to 
say, of the Grand Chapter, were thus " the real fomentors 
of revolutions, the others were only docile agents." 3 In 
the opinion of Papus and of contemporary masons them- 
selves the Revolution of 1789 was the outcome of this com- 
bination. 4 

Indeed the influence of Freemasonry on the French 
Revolution cannot be denied by any honest inquirer into 
the causes of that great upheaval, and, as we shall see later, 
the French Freemasons themselves proudly claimed the 
Revolution as their work. It was thus that George Sand, 
herself a mason (for the Grand Orient from the beginning 
admitted women to the Order), wrote long afterwards: 
" Half a century before those days marked out by destiny 

1 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 10. 2 Papus, op. cit. p. 139. 

3 Ibid. p. 144. 4 Ibid. pp. 142, 144, 146. 



ILLUMINISM 7 

. . . the French Revolution was fermenting in the dark 
and hatching below ground. It was maturing in the minds 
of believers to the point of fanaticism, in the form of a 
dream of universal revolution. . . ." * 

The Socialist historian, Louis Blanc, also a Freemason, 
has thrown much light on the question of these occult 
forces. 

We know, moreover, that George Sand was right in 
attributing to the Secret Societies the origin of the revolu- 
tionary war-cry, " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." Long 
before the Revolution broke out the formula " Liberty and 
Equality " had been current in the lodges of the Grand 
Orient — a formula that sounds wholly pacific, yet which 
holds within it a whole world of discord. For observe the 
contradiction : it is impossible to have complete liberty and 
equality, the two are mutually exclusive. It is possible to 
have a system of complete liberty in which every man is 
free to behave as he pleases, to do what he will with his own, 
td rob or to murder, to live, that is to say, under the law of 
the jungle, rule by the strongest, but there is no equality 
there. Or one may have a system of absolute equality, of 
cutting every one down to the same dead level, of crushing 
all incentive in man to rise above his fellows, but there is 
no liberty there. So Grand Orient Freemasonry, by coup- 
ling together two words for ever incompatible, threw into 
the arena an apple of discord over which the world has 
never ceased to quarrel from that day to this, and which 
has throughout divided the revolutionary forces into two 
opposing camps. 

As to the word Fraternity, which completes the masonic 
formula, we find that this was added by a further Secret 
Society, the Martinistes, founded in 1754 by a Portuguese 
Jew, Martinez Paschalis (or Pasqually), who had evolved 
a system out of gnosticism, Judaized Christianity, and the 
philosophies of Greece and of the East. 

This Order split up into two branches, one continued 
by Saint-Martin, a disciple of Martinez Paschalis, but also 
of Jacob Boehme, and a fervent Christian, and the other a 
more or less revolutionary body by which the lodge of the 

1 La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, ii. 219. 



8 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Philalethes was founded in Paris. In the book of Saint- 
Martin, Des erreurs et de la veritt, published in 1775, the 
formula " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity " is referred 
to as " le ternaire sacre." , 

The Martinistes, frequently referred to in French con- 
temporary records as the Illumines, were in reality dream- 
ers and fanatics, 1 and must not be confounded with the 
Order of the Illuminati of Bavaria that came into existence 
twenty-two years later. It is by this " terrible and formid- 
able sect " that the gigantic plan of World Revolution was 
worked out under the leadership of the man whom Louis 
Blanc has truly described as " the profoundest conspirator 
that has ever existed." 

Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, was 
born on the 6th of February, 1748. His early training by 
the Jesuits had inspired him with a violent dislike for their 
Order, and he turned with eagerness to the subversive 
teaching of the French philosophers and the anti-Christian 
doctrines of the Manicheans. It is said that he was also 
indoctrinated into Egyptian occultism by a certain mer- 
chant of unknown origin from Jutland, named Kolmer, 
who was travelling about Europe during the year 1771 in 
search of adepts. 2 Weishaupt, who combined the practical 
German brain with the cunning of Machiavelli, spent no 
less than five years thinking out a plan by which all these 
ideas should be reduced to a system, and at the end of this 
period he had evolved the following theory : 

Civilization, Weishaupt held with Rousseau, was a mis- 
take: it had developed along the wrong lines, and to this 
cause all the inequalities of human life were due. " Man," 
he declared, " is fallen from the condition of Liberty and 
Equality, the State of Pure Nature. He is under subor- 
dination and civil bondage arising from the vices of Man. 
This is the Fall and Original Sin." The first step towards 
regaining the state of primitive liberty consisted in learning 
to do without things. Man must divest himself of all the 
trappings laid on him by civilization and return to nomadic 

1 "The Martinistes, whose tendencies were purely scientific, passed 
frequently for madmen and despised politics" (Papus, op. cit. p. 55). 

2 Les Sectes et societes secretes, by the Comte Le Couteulx de Canteleu 
(1863), p. 152. 



IDLUMINISM 9 

conditions — even clothing, food, and fixed abodes should 
be abandoned. Necessarily, therefore, all arts and sciences 
must be abolished. " Do the common sciences afford real 
enlightenment, real human happiness? or are they not 
rather children of necessity, the complicated needs of a 
state contrary to Nature, the inventions of vain and empty 
brains? " Moreover, " are not many of the complicated 
needs of civilization the means of retaining in power the 
mercantile class (Kauf mannschaf t) , which if allowed any 
authority in the government would inevitably end by 
exercising the most formidable' and despotic power? You 
will see it dictating the law to the universe, and from it will 
perhaps ensue the independence of one part of the world, 
the slavery of the other. For he is a master who can arouse 
and foresee, stifle, satisfy, or lessen needs. And who can 
do that better than tradesmen? " 

Once released from the bondage civilization imposes, 
Man must then be self-governing. " Why," asked 
Weishaupt, " should it be impossible to the human race 
to attain its highest perfection, the capacity for govern! 
itself? " For this reason not only should kings and nobles 
be abolished, but even a Republic should not be tolerated, 
and the people should be taught to do without any con- 
trolling authority, any law, or any civil code. In order to 
make this system a success it would be necessary only to 
inculcate in Man " a just and steady morality," and since 
Weishaupt professed to share Rousseau's belief in the 
inherent goodness of human nature this would not be diffi- 
cult, and society might then " go on peaceably in a state 
of perfect Liberty and Equality." For since the only real 
obstacle to human perfection lay in the restraints imposed 
on Man by artificial conditions of life, the removal of these 
must inevitably restore him to his primitive virtue. ' ' Man 
is not bad except as he is made so by arbitrary morality. 
He is bad because Religion, the State, and bad examples 
pervert him." It was necessary, therefore, to root out from 
his mind all ideas of a Hereafter, all fear of retribution for 
evil deeds, and to substitute for these superstitions the 
religion of Reason. " When at least Reason becomes the 
religion of men, then will the problem be solved." 




10 WORLD REVOLUTION 

After deliverance from the bondage of religion, the 
loosening of all social ties must follow. Both family and 
national life must cease to exist so as to " make of the 
human race one good and happy family." The origins of 
patriotism and the love of kindred are thus described by 
Weishaupt in the directions given to his Hierophants for 
the instruction of initiates : 

At the moment when men united themselves into nations 
they ceased to recognise themselves under a common name. 
Nationalism or National Love took the place of universal love. 
With the division of the globe and its countries benevolence 
restricted itself behind boundaries that it was never again to 
transgress. Then it became a virtue to spread out at the expense 
of those who did not happen to be under our dominion. Then 
in order to attain this goal, it became permissible to despise 
foreigners, and to deceive and to offend them. This virtue was 
called Patriotism. That man was called a Patriot, who, whilst 
just towards his own people, was unjust to others, who blinded 
himself to the merits of foreigners and took for perfections 
the vices of his own country. So one sees that Patriotism gave 
birth to Localism, to the family spirit, and finally to Egoism. 
Thus the origin of states or governments of civil society was 
the seed of discord and Patriotism found its punishment in 
itself. . . . Diminish, do away with this love of country, and 
men will once more learn to know and love each other as men, 
there will be no more partiality, the ties between hearts will 
unroll and extend. 1 

In these words, the purest expression of International- 
ism as it is expounded today, Weishaupt displayed an 
ignorance of primeval conditions of life as profound as that 
of Rousseau. The idea of palaeolithic man, whose skeleton 
is usually exhumed with a flint instrument or other weapon 
of warfare grasped in its hand, passing his existence in a 
state of " universal love," is simply ludicrous. It was 
not, however, in his diatribes against civilization that 
Weishaupt surpassed Rousseau, but in the plan he devised 
for overthrowing it. Rousseau had merely paved the 
way for revolution; Weishaupt constructed the actual 
machinery of revolution itself. 

It was on the 1st of May 1776 that Weishaupt's five 

1 Nachtrag . . . Originalschriften , (des IUuminaten Or dens), Zweite 
Abtheilung, p. 65. 



ILLUMINISM 11 

years of meditation resulted in his founding the secret 
society that he named, after bygone philosophical systems, 
the Illuminati. 1 All the members were required to adopt 
classical names: thus Weishaupt took that of Spartacus, 
the leader of an insurrection of slaves in ancient Rome; 
his principal ally, Herr von Zwack, privy councillor to the 
Prince von Salm, became Cato ; the Marquis di Constanza, 
Diomedes; Massenhausen, Ajax; Hertel, Marius; the 
Baron von Schroeckenstein, Mahomed ; the Baron Mengen- 
hofen, Sylla, etc. In the same way the names of places 
were changed to those celebrated in antiquity ; Munich, the 
headquarters of the system, was to be known as Athens; 
Ingoldstadt, the birthplace of Illuminism, as Ephesus, or 
to the adepts initiated into the inner mysteries of the 
Order, as Eleusis ; Heidelberg as Utica, Bavaria as Achaia, 
Suabia as Pannonia, etc. For greater secrecy in correspond- 
ence the word Illuminism was to be replaced by the 
cypher o , and the word lodge by Q . The calendar also 
was to be reconstructed and the months known by names 
suggestive of Hebrew origin — January as Dimeh, Febru- 
ary as Benmeh, etc. For the letters of the alphabet a com- 
plete code of figures was constructed, beginning with m as 
number 1, and working back to a and on to z. 

The grades of the Order were a combination of the 
grades of Freemasonry and the degrees belonging to the 
Jesuits. Weishaupt, as has already been said, detested the 
Jesuits, but recognizing the efficiency of their methods in 
acquiring influence over the minds of their disciples, he 
conceived the idea of adopting their system to his own pur- 
pose. " He admired," says the Abbe Barruel, " the insti- 
tutions of the founders of this Order, he admired above all 
those laws, that regime of the Jesuits, which under one 
head made so many men dispersed all pver the universe 
tend towards the same object; he felt that one might 
imitate their methods whilst proposing to himself views 
diametrically opposed. He said to himself : ' What all these 
men have done for altars and empires, why should I not 
do against altars and empires? By the attraction of 

1 A German sect of this name professing Satanism, with which Weis- 
haupt's Order may have been connected, existed in the fifteenth century. 



12 WORLD REVOLUTION 

mysteries, of legends, of adepts, why should not I destroy 
in the dark what they erect in the light of day? ' " 

Weishaupt at first entertained hopes of persuading 
other ex- Jesuits to join the society V hut having succeeded 
in enlisting only two he became more than ever the enemy 
of their Order, and injunctions were given to his adepts to 
admit no Jews or Jesuits to the sect of the Illuminati unless 
by special permission. " Ex- Jesuits," he wrote emphatic- 
ally, " must be avoided as the plague." 

It was in the training of adepts that Weishaupt showed 
his profound subtlety. Proselytes were not to be admitted 
at once to the secret aims of Illuminism, but initiated step 
by step into the higher mysteries — and the greatest cau- 
tion was to be exercised not to reveal to the novice 
doctrines that might be likely to revolt him. For this pur- 
pose the initiators must acquire the habit of " talking 
backwards and forwards " so as not to commit themselves. 
" One must speak," Weishaupt explained to the Superiors 
of the Order, " sometimes in one way, sometimes in 
another, so that our real purpose should remain impene- 
trable to our inferiors." 

Thus to certain novices (the novices 6cossais) the Illu- 
minati must profess to disapprove of revolutions, and 
demonstrate the advantages of proceeding by peaceful 
methods towards the attainment of world domination. But 
to the Minerval the plan of world power must not be 
revealed ; on the contrary, one of the opening sentences in 
the initiation for this grade runs as follows: " After two 
years' reflection, experience, intercourse, reading of the 
graduated writings and information, you will necessarily 
have formed the impression that the final aim of our 
society is nothing less than to win power and riches, to 
undermine secular or religious government and to obtain 
the mastery of the world." Qui s y excuse s' accuse indeed! 
The passage then goes on to say vaguely that this is not 
the case and that the Order only demands of the initiate 
the fulfilment of his obligations. Nor must antagonism to 
religion be admitted; on the contrary, Christ was to be 
represented as the first author of Illuminism, whose secret 
mission was to restore to men the original liberty and 



ILLUMINISM 13 

equality they had lost in the Fall. " No one," the" novice 
should be told, " paved so sure a way for liberty as our 
Grand Master Jesus of Nazareth, and if Christ exhorted 
his disciples to despise riches it was in order to prepare the 
world for that community of goods that should do away 
with property." 

This device proved particularly successful not only with 
young novices, but with men of all ranks and ages. " The 
most admirable thing of all," wrote Spartacus triumph- 
antly to Cato, " is that great Protestant and reformed 
theologians (Lutherans and Calvinists) who belong to our 
Order really believe they see in it the true and genuine 
mind of the Christian religion. Oh! man, what cannot you 
be brought to believe! " By this means, as Philo (the 
Baron von Knigge) later on pointed out, the Order was 
able " to tickle those who have a hankering for religion." 

It was not, then, until his admission to the higher 
grades that the adept was initiated into the real intentions 
of Illuminism with regard to religion. When he reached 
the grade of Illuminated Major or Minor, of Scotch Knight, 
Epopte, or Priest he was told the whole secret of the Order 
in a discourse by the Initiator: 

Remember that from the first invitations which we have 
given you in order to attract you to us, we commenced by telling 
you that in the projects of our Order there did not enter any 
designs against religion. You remember that such an assurance 
was given you when you were admitted into the ranks of our 
novices, and that it was repeated when you entered into our 
Minerval Academy. . . . You remember with what art, with 
what simulated respect we have spoken to you of Christ and of 
his gospel; but in the grades of greater Illuminism, of Scotch 
Knight, and of Epopte or Priest, how we have to know to form 
from Christ's gospel that of our reason, and from its religion that 
of nature, and from religion, reason, morality and Nature, to 
make the religion and morality of the rights of man, of equality 
and of liberty. . . . We have had many prejudices to overcome 
in you before being able to persuade you that the pretended 
religion of Christ was nothing else than the work of priests, of 
imposture and of tyranny. If it be so with that religion so much 
proclaimed and admired, what are we to think of other religions ? 
Understand then that they have all the same fictions for their 
origin, that they are all equally founded on lying, error, chimera 
and imposture. Behold our secret. ... If in order to destroy 



14 WORLD REVOLUTION 

all Christianity, all religion, we have pretended to have the sole 
true religion, remember that the end justifies the means, and that 
the wise ought to take all the means to do good which the wicked 
take to do evil. Those which we have taken to deliver you, those 
which we have taken to deliver one day the human race from all 
religion, are nothing else than a pious fraud which we reserve to 
unveil one day in the grade of Magus or Philosopher Illuminated. 

But all this was unknown to the novice, whose confi- 
dence being won by the simulation of religion was enjoined 
to strict obedience. Amongst the questions put to him 
were the following : 

If you came to discover anything wrong or unjust to be done 
under the Order what line would you take ? 

Will you and can you regard the good of the Order as your 
own good? 

Will you give to our Society the right of life and death? 

Do you bind yourself to absolute and unreserved obedience? 
And do you know the force of this undertaking? 

By way of warning as to the consequences of betraying 
the Order a forcible illustration was included in the cere- 
mony of initiation. Taking a naked sword from the table, 
the Initiator held the point against the heart of the novice 
with these words : 

If you are only a traitor and perjurer learn that all our 
brothers are called upon to arm themselves against you. Do not 
hope to escape or to find a place of safety. Wherever you are, 
shame, remorse, and the rage of our brothers will pursue you 
and torment you to the innermost recesses of your entrails. 

It will thus be seen that the Liberty vaunted by the 
leaders of the Illuminati had no existence, and that iron 
discipline was in reality the watchword of the Order. 

A great point impressed upon the adepts — t of which 
we shall see the importance later — was that they should 
not be known as Illuminati; this rule was particularly 
enforced in the case of those described as " enrollers," and 
by way of attracting proselytes they were further admon- 
ished to be irreproachable. " The Superiors of the Order 
are to be regarded as the most perfect and enlightened of 
men ; they must not even permit any doubts on their infal- 
libility." Therefore to the enrollers it was said: " Apply 
yourselves to inward and outward perfection," but also 



ILLUMINISM 15 

" Apply yourselves to the art of counterfeit, of hiding and 
masking yourselves when observing others, so as to pene- 
trate into their minds (Die Kunst zu erlernen, andere zu 
beobachten und auszuf orschen) . " These precepts were 
summed up in the one phrase: " Keep silence, be perfect, 
mask yourselves." How far the founder of the Order had 
himself attained perfection was subsequently revealed by 
the discovery of his papers, amongst which was found a 
letter from Weishaupt to Hertel in 1783, confessing that he 
had seduced his sister-in-law, and adding : " I am therefore 
in danger of losing my honour and that reputation which 
gave me so much authority over our world." 

For a time this reputation for perfectibility was suc- 
cessfully maintained for the benefit of the members, who 
would have been revolted by a breach of morality, and 
only those likely to be attracted by it were to be allowed 
to know of the laxity permitted by the Order. 

Women were also to be enlisted as Illuminati by being 
given " hints of emancipation." * " Through women," 
wrote Weishaupt, " one may often work the best in the 
world; to insinuate ourselves with these and to win them 
over should be one of our cleverest studies. More or less 
they can all be led towards change by vanity, curiosity, 
sensuality, and inclination. From this can one draw much 
profit for the good cause. This sex has a large part of the 
world in its hands." 2 The female adepts were then to be 
divided into two classes, each with its own secret, the first 
to consist of virtuous women who would give an air of 
respectability to the Order, the second of " light women," 
" who would help to. satisfy those brothers who have a 
penchant for pleasure." But the present utility of both 
classes would consist in providing funds for the society. 
Fools with money, whether men or women, were to be 
particularly welcomed. " These good people," wrote 
Spartacus to Ajax and Cato, " swell our numbers and fill 
our money-box; set yourselves to work; these gentlemen 
must be made to nibble at the bait. . . . But let us beware 
of telling them our secrets, this sort of people must always 

1 Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 34. 

* Neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo, vi. 139. 



16 WORLD REVOLUTION 

be made to believe that the grade they have reached is the last. 11 1 
The sect was thus to consist of Weishaupt and the 
adepts who had been initiated into the inner mysteries, 
and, besides these, of a large following of simple and credu- 
lous people who could be kept in ignorance of the real goal 
towards which they were being driven. Weishaupt's 
method for obtaining proselytes is thus shown by a diagram 
in the code of the Illuminati : 

O 



aO Oa 



bO bO cO cO 

O 00 00 00 O 

(Reproduced from Originals chr if ten des Illuminaten Ordens, Zweite Abtheilung, p. 60.) 

Naturally the least educated classes offered a wide field 
for Weishaupt's activities. ' * It is also necessary, ' ' runs the 
code of the Illuminati, " to gain the common people (das 
gemeine Volk) to our Order. The great means to that end 
is influence in the schools. One can also succeed, now by 
liberty, now by striking an effect, and at other times by 
humiliating oneself, by making oneself popular, or endur- 
ing with an air of patience prejudices that one can grad- 
ually root out later." 2 

Espionage formed a large part of Weishaupt's pro- 
gramme. The adepts known as the " Insinuating Broth- 
ers " were enjoined to assume the r61e of " observers " and 
" reporters "; "every person shall be made a spy on 
another and on all around him"; "friends, relations, 
enemies, those who are indifferent — all without exception 
shall be the object of his inquiries; he shall attempt to dis- 
cover their strong side and their weak, their passions, their 
prejudices, their connections, above all, their actions — in 
a word, the most detailed information about them." All 
this is to be entered on tablets that the Insinuant carries 
with him, and from which he shall draw up reports to be 
sent in twice a month to his Superiors, so that the Order 

1 Barruel, Memoir es sur le Jacobinisme, in. 28, quoting Original- 
schriften. 

2 Neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo, vii. 



ILLUMINISM 17 

may know which are the people in each town and village 
to whom it can look for support. 

It is impossible not to admire the ingenuity of the sys- 
tem by which each section of the community was to be 
made to believe that it would reap untold benefits from 
Illuminism — princes whose kingdoms were to be reft 
from them, priests and ministers whose religion was to be 
destroyed, merchants whose commerce was to be ruined, 
women who were to be reduced to the rank of squaws, 
peasants who were to be made to return to a state of 
savagery, were all, by means of dividing up the secrets of 
the Order into watertight compartments, to be persuaded 
that in Illuminism alone lay their prosperity or salvation, 

Secrecy being thus the great principle of his system. 
Weishaupt had not been slow to perceive the advantages 
offered by an alliance with Freemasonry. During the 
period when he was thinking out his plan the real aims of 
masonry were unknown to him. " He only knew," says 
the Abbe Barruel, " that the Freemasons held secret meet- 
ings, he saw them united by a mysterious link and recog- 
nizing each other as brothers by certain signs and certain 
words, to whatever nation or religion they belonged; he 
therefore conceived a new combination of which the result 
was to be a society adopting for its methods — as far as it 
suited him — the regime of the Jesuits and the mysterious 
silence, the obscure existence of the Masons. ..." 

It was in 1777, nearly two years after he had founded 
the Order of the Illuminati, that Weishaupt became a 
Freemason, and towards the end of 1778 the idea was first 
launched of amalgamating the two societies. Cato, that is 
to say Herr von Zwack, who became a mason on November 
27, 1778, talked the matter over with a brother mason, the 
Abbe Marotti, to whom he confided the whole secret of 
IUurninism; and two years later a further understanding 
between Illuminism and Freemasonry was brought about 
by a certain Freemason, Freiherr von Knigge, who in 
July 1780 arrived at Frankfurt, where he met the Illumina- 
tus Diomedes — the Marquis di Constanza — sent by the 
Bavarian Illuminati to establish colonies in Protestant 
countries. The two men compared notes on the aims of 



18 WORLD REVOLUTION 

their respective societies, and Knigge then expressed the 
wish to be received into the Order of the Illuminati. This 
met with the approval of Weishaupt, and Knigge, adopting 
the name of Philo, was thereupon initiated into the secrets 
of the first class of Illuminism — the Minervals. The zeal 
he displayed in obtaining proselytes delighted Spartacus. 
" Philo," he wrote, " is the master from whom to take 
lessons ; give me six men of his stamp and with them I will 
change the face of the Universe." 

As a result of the negotiations between Weishaupt and 
Knigge a kind of union was arranged between the two 
societies, and Spartacus agreed to Illuminism receiving the 
first three degrees of masonry. On the 20th of December 
1781 it was finally decided that the combined Order should 
be composed of three classes: (a) the Minervals, (b) the 
Freemasons, and (c) the Mystery Class, which, as the 
highest of all, was divided into the lesser and greater 
mysteries, the former including the grades of " Priests " 
and " Regents," the latter the " Mages " and the " Men- 
Kings." 

But it was not until the Congres de Wilhelmsbad that 
the alliance between Illuminism and Freemasonry was 
finally sealed. This assembly, of which the importance to 
the subsequent history of the world has never been appre- 
ciated by historians, met for the first time on the 16th of 
July 1782, and included representatives of all the Secret 
Societies — Martinistes as well as Freemasons and Illu- 
minati — which now numbered no less than three million 
members all over the world. Amongst these different 
orders the Illuminati of Bavaria alone had formulated a 
definite plan of campaign, and it was they who hencefor- 
ward took the lead. What passed at this terrible Congress 
will never be known to the outside world, for even those 
men who had been drawn unwittingly into the movement, 
and now heard for the first time the real designs of the 
leaders, were under oath to reveal nothing. One such 
honest Freemason, the Comte de Virieu, a member of a 
Martiniste lodge at Lyons, returning from the Congres de 
Wilhelmsbad could not conceal his alarm, and when ques- 
tioned on the " tragic secrets " he had brought back with 



ILLUMINISM 19 

him, replied: " I will not confide them to you. I can only 
tell you that all this is very much more serious than you 
think. The conspiracy which is being woven is so well 
thought out that it will be, so to speak, impossible for the 
Monarchy and the Church to escape from it." From this . 

time onwards, says his biographer, M. Costa de Beaure- [/ 

gard, " the Comte de Virieu could only speak of Free- 
masonry with horror." 

The years of 1781 and 1782 were remarkable for the 
growth of another movement which found expression at 
the Congres de Wilhelmsbad, namely, the emancipation of 
the Jews. During these years a wave of pro-Semitism was 
produced throughout Europe by Dohm's great book Upon 
the Civil Amelioration of the Condition of the Jews, written 
under the influence of Moses Mendelssohn and finished in 
August 1781. 1 "It was thus," wrote the Abbe Lemann, 
" that eight years before the Revolution the programme in 
favour of Judaism was sent out by Prussia. . . . This 
book had a considerable influence on the revolutionary 
movement; it is the trumpet call of the Jewish cause, the 
signal for the step forward." 2 

Graetz, the Jewish historian, himself recognizes the 
immense importance of Dohm's work, " painting the 
Christians as cruel barbarians and the Jews as illustrious 
martyrs." 3 "All thinking people," he adds, " now began 
to interest themselves in the Jewish question." Mirabeau, 
a few years later on a mission to Berlin, formed a friendship 
with Dohm and became an habitue of the salon of a young 
and beautiful Jewess, Henriette de Lemos, wife of Dr. 
Herz, and it was there that the disciples of Mendelssohn, 
who had just died, pressed him to raise his voice in favour 
of the oppressed Jews, with the result that Mirabeau pub- 
lished a book in London on the same lines as Dohm's. 4 

Meanwhile, in 1781, Anacharsis Clootz, the future 

1 Graetz, History of the Jews, v. 438; A. de la Rive, Le Juif dans la 
franc-maconnerie, pp. 40-43. 

2 Abbe" Lemann, V Entree des Israelites dans la societe frangaise, Paris, 
1886. 

3 Graetz, v. 373. 

4 Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur la reforme politique des Juifs; el en 
particulier sur la revolution tentee en leur faveur en 1753 dans la Grande- 
Bretagne. A Londres, 1787. 



20 WORLD REVOLUTION 

author of La Republique Universelle, wrote his pro-Semitic 
pamphlet called " Lettre sur les Juifs." 

The result of this agitation was seen later in the edicts 
passed through the influence of Mirabeau and the Abbe 
Gregoire by the National Assembly in 1791 decreeing the 
emancipation of the Jews. A more immediate effect, how- 
ever, was the resolution taken at the masonic congress of 
Wilhelmsbad — which was attended by Lessing and a 
company of Jews * — that henceforth Jews should no 
longer be excluded from the lodges. 2 At the same time it 
was decided to remove the headquarters of illuminized 
Freemasonry to Frankfurt, which incidentally was the 
stronghold of Jewish finance, controlled at this date by 
such leading members of the race as Rothschild, Mayer 
Amschel — later to become Rothschild also — Oppen- 
heimer, Wertheimer, Schuster, Speyer, Stern, and others. 3 
At this head lodge of Frankfurt the gigantic plan of world 
revolution was carried forward, and it was there that at a 
large masonic congress in 1786 two French Freemasons 
afterwards declared the deaths of Louis XVI. and Gusta- 
vus III. of Sweden were definitely decreed. 4 

From the moment of the great coalition effected at 
Wilhelmsbad, Illuminism, aided largely by the activities 
of Knigge, was able to extend its ramifications all over 
Germany; the lodge of Eichstadt under Mahomed (the 
Baron Schroeckenstein) illuminated Baireuth and other 
Imperial towns; Berlin under Nicolai and Leuchtsenring 
illuminated the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania ; 
Frankfurt illuminated Hanover, and so on. All these 

1 A. Cowan, The X-Rays in Freemasonry, p. 122; Archives israelites 
(1867), p. 466. ~ 

2 A. de la Rive, Le Juif dans la franc-magonnerie, p. 36. Hitherto 
Jews had only been admitted into the lodges of the Order of Melchisedeck, 
of which the three principal grades are given by the Marquis de Luchet as 
(1) The Freres Inities d'Asie; • (2) The Matires des Sages; (3) The Pretres 
Royaux or Veritables Freres Rose-croix, or the grade of Melchisedeck. 

The Freres Inities d'Asie were an order of which the hieroglyphics 
were taken from Hebrew, the supreme direction was called " The small 
and constant Sanhedrim of Europe " (Essai sur la secte des Illumines 
(1789), p. 212). Lombard de Langres says this secret society became 
affiliated to Illuminism, that its centre was at Hamburg, and that only 
the Grand Master knew the whole secret (Des societes secretes i en}\Alle- 
magne, pp. 81, 82). 

3 Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modem Capitalism, p. 187. 

4 Charles d'Hencault, La Revolution, p. 104. 



ILLUMINISM 21 

branches were controlled by the twelve leading adepts 
headed by Weishaupt, who at the lodge in Munich held in 
his hands the threads of the whole conspiracy. 

But dissensions had now begun amongst the two prin- 
cipal leaders — Weishaupt and Knigge. Both were indeed 
born intriguers, but whilst Weishaupt preferred to work 
in the dark and wrap himself in mystery, Knigge loved to 
make a noise in the world and to meddle with everything. 
It was inevitable that two such men could not continue 
to work together harmoniously, and before long Knigge 's 
persistent attempts to pry into Weishaupt' s secrets and to 
usurp a share of his glory roused the animosity of his chief, 
who ended by depriving Knigge of his post as director of 
the provinces and placing him in a subordinate position. 
Whereat " Philo," on the 20th of January 1783, wrote 
indignantly to " Cato " : " It is the Jesuitry of Weishaupt 
that causes all our divisions, it is the despotism that he 
exercises over men perhaps less rich than himself in imagi- 
nation, in ruses, in cunning. ... I declare that nothing 
can put me on the same footing with Spartacus as that on 
which I was at first." As a matter of fact Knigge was in no 
way behind Weishaupt in what he described as " Jesuitry," 
but revolted by the tyranny of his leader he finally left the 
Illuminati in anger and disgust. " I abhor treachery and 
profligacy," he wrote again to Cato, " and I leave him to 
blow himself and his Order into the air." 

Public opinion had now, however, become thoroughly 
roused on the subject of the society, and the Elector of 
Bavaria, informed of the danger to the State constituted 
by its adepts, who were said to have declared that " the 
Illuminati must in time rule the world," published an edict 
forbidding all secret societies. In April of the following 
year, 1785, four other Illuminati, who like Knigge had left 
the society, disgusted by the tyranny of Weishaupt, were 
summoned before a Court of Inquiry to give an account 
of the doctrines and methods of the sect. The evidence of 
these men — Utschneider, Cossandey, Grunberger, and 
Renner, all professors of the Marianen Academy — left no 
further room for doubt as to the diabolical nature of 
Illuminism. " All religion," they declared, " all love of 



22 WORLD REVOLUTION 

country and loyalty to sovereigns, were to be annihilated, 
a favourite maxim of the Order being: 

Tous les rois et tous les pretres 
Sont des fripons et des traitres. 

Moreover, every effort was to be made to create discord 
not only between princes and their subjects but between 
ministers and their secretaries, and even between parents 
and children, whilst suicide was to be encouraged by incul- 
cating in men's minds the idea that the act of killing 
oneself afforded a certain voluptuous pleasure. Espionage 
was to be extended even to the post by placing adepts in 
the post offices who possessed the art of opening letters and 
closing them again without fear of detection." Robison, 
who studied all the evidence of the four professors, thus 
sums up the plan of Weishaupt as revealed by them : 

The Order of the Illuminati adjured Christianity and 
advocated sensual pleasures. " In the lodges death was 
declared an eternal sleep; patriotism and loyalty were 
called narrow-minded prejudices and incompatible with 
universal benevolence"; 1 further, "they accounted all 
princes usurpers and tyrants, and all privileged orders as 
their abettors . . . they meant to abolish the laws which 
protected property accumulated by long-continued and 
successful industry ; and to prevent for the future any such 
accumulation. They intended to establish universal liberty 
and equality, the imprescriptible rights of man . . . and 
as necessary preparations for all this they intended to root 
out all religion and ordinary morality, and even to break 
the bonds of domestic life, by destroying the veneration 
for marriage vows, and by taking the education of children 
out of the hands of the parents." 2 

Reduced to a simple formula the aims of the Illuminati 
may be summarized in the following six points ■ 

1. Abolition of Monarchy and all ordered Govtoiment. 

2. Abolition of private property. \ 

3. Abolition of inheritance. 

4. Abolition of patriotism. 

1 Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy, pp. 106, 107. 

* Ibid. p. 375. 'J 



ILLUMINISM 23 

5. Abolition of the family (i.e. of marriage and all 

morality, and the institution of the communal 
education of children). 

6. Abolition of all religion. 

Now it will surely be admitted that the above forms a 
programme hitherto unprecedented in the history of civil- 
ization. Communistic theories had been held by isolated 
thinkers or groups of thinkers since the days of Plato, but 
no one, as far as we know, had ever yet seriously proposed 
to destroy everything for which civilization stands. More- 
over, when, as we shall see, the plan of IUuminism as 
codified by the above six points has continued up to the 
present day to form the exact programme of the World 
Revolution, how can we doubt that the whole movement 
originated with the Illuminati or with secret influences at 
work behind them? 

Here a curious point arises. Was Weishaupt the 
inventor of his system? We know that he was indoctrin- 
ated in occultism by Kolmer, but beyond this we can dis- 
cover nothing. If indeed Weishaupt himself thought out 
his whole plan of world revolution — that " gigantic con- 
ception " as it is described by Louis Blanc — how is it that 
so vast a genius should have remained absolutely unknown 
to posterity? How is it that succeeding groups of world 
revolutionaries whilst all following in his footsteps, even 
those who we know positively to have belonged to his 
Order, never once have referred to the source of their 
inspiration? Is not the answer to the latter question that 
throughout the movement the adepts of the Order have 
always adhered to the stringent rule laid down by Wei- 
shaupt that they should never allow themselves to be 
known as Illuminati ? The persistent efforts to conceal the 
very existence of the Order, or, if this proves impossible, 
to represent it as an unimportant philanthropic movement, 
has continued up to the very year in which I write. 

With regard to the philanthropic nature of IUuminism 
it is only necessary to consult the original writings of 
Weishaupt to realize the ' hollowness of this assurance. 
Amongst the whole correspondence which passed between 
Weishaupt and his adepts laid bare by the Government of 



24 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Bavaria, we find no word of sympathy with the poor or 
suffering, no hint of social reform, nothing but the desire 
either for domination, for world power, or sheer love of 
destruction, and throughout all the insatiable spirit of 
intrigue. For this purpose every method was held to be 
justifiable, since the fundamental doctrine of the sect was 
that " the end sanctifies the means (der Zweck heiligt die 
Mittel)," which Weishaupt referred to in his code, declaring 
it to be a part of the Jesuit system — an imputation which 
the Abbe Barruel indignantly denies — and which inevi- 
tably led, as Robison points out, to the conclusion that 
" nothing would be scrupled at, if it could be made appear 
that the Order would derive advantage from it, because the 
great object of the Order was held as superior to every 
consideration." 

As might be expected, Weishaupt loudly protested 
against the account of his S3ciety given by the four profes- 
sors, declaring that they had not been initiated into its 
inner mysteries, but the discovery a little later of his corre- 
spondence with Zwack — ■ from which quotations have 
already been given earlier in this chapter — threw a still 
more sinister light on the real aims of the Order. It was on 
the 11th of October 1785 that the Bavarian authorities 
descended upon the house of Zwack and seized the docu- 
ments which laid bare the methods of the conspirators. 
Here were found descriptions of a strong box for safe- 
guarding papers which if forced open should blow up by 
means of an infernal machine; of a composition which 
should blind or kill if squirted in the face ; of a method for 
counterfeiting seals; recipes for a particularly deadly kind 
of ''aqua toff ana/' for poisonous perfumes that would fill 
-a bedroom with pestilential vapours, and for a tea to pro- 
cure abortion. A eulogy of atheism entitled Better than 
Horus was also discovered, and a paper in the handwriting 
of Zwack describing the plan for enlisting women in the 
two classes mentioned above : 

It will be of great service and procure much information and 
money, and will suit charmingly the taste of many of our truest 
members who are lovers of the sex. It should consist of two 
classes, the virtuous and the freer-hearted. . . . They must not 



ILLUMINISM 25 

know of each other, and must be under the direction of men, 
but without knowing it . . . through good books, and the latter 
(class) through the indulging of their passions in concealment. 1 

The IUuminati of course still proclaimed their inno- 
cence, and though not attempting to deny the authenticity 
of these documents, declared that they had been misin- 
terpreted, and that the real purpose of the Order was to 
make of the human race " one good and happy family." 
But the damning evidence their papers contained made the 
plan of the IUuminati only too clear, which was no other 
than to bring about " the universal revolution that should 
deal the death-blow to society." " Princes and nations," 
Weishaupt had written, " shall disappear off the face of 
the earth ; yes, the time will come when men will have no 
other laws than the book of nature ; this revolution will be 
the work of the secret societies, and that is one of our 
great mysteries." 

The fearful danger presented by the IUuminati now 
became apparent, and the Government of Bavaria, judging 
that the best manner of conveying a warning to the 
civilized w^orld would be to allow the papers to speak for 
themselves, ordered them to be printed forthwith and cir- 
culated as widely as possible. A copy of this publication, 
entitled Original Writings of the Order of the IUuminati, was 
then forwarded to every Government of Europe, but, 
strange to say, attracted little attention, the truth being 
doubtless, as the Abbe Barruel points out, that the extrav- 
agance of the scheme therein propounded rendered it 
unbelievable, and the rulers of Europe, refusing to take 
IUuminism seriously, put it aside as a chimera. 

The Government of Bavaria, however, continued its 
proceedings against the sect; several of its members were 
arrested ; Zwack left the country on a mission to England ; 
Weishaupt, with a price set on his head, took refuge with 
one of his royal adepts, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha. This 
apparent break-up of the society admirably served the 
purpose of the conspirators, w T ho now diligently circulated 
the news that IUuminism had ceased to exist — a decep- 
tion carried on ever since by interested historians anxious 

1 Nachtrag . . . Originalschriften. i. 6. 



26 WORLD REVOLUTION 

to suppress the truth about its subsequent activities. The 
truth is that not until Illuminism had been apparently- 
extinguished in Bavaria was it able to make its formidable 
influence felt abroad, and public anxiety being allayed it 
could secretly extend its organization over the whole 
civilized world. 



CHAPTER II 

THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Uluminism in France — Cagliostro — Mirabeau — Intrigues of Prussia — 
The Orleanistes — The Reign of Terror — Clootz and Internation- 
alism — Robespierre and Socialism — The plan of depopulation — 
After-effects of revolution. 

Two years before the suppression of Uluminism in Bavaria 
its adepts had begun their work in France. The " magi- 
cian " Cagliostro, generally reputed to be a Jew 1 from 
Sicily, had been enrolled as an Illuminatus in Germany. 
According to his own account given in the course of his 
interrogatory before the Holy See in Rome in 1790, " his 
initiation took place at a little distance from Frankfort in 
an underground room. An iron box filled with papers was 
opened. The introducers took from it a manuscript book 
on the first page of which one read : ' We, Grand Masters of 
the Templars — ' Then followed a form of oath, traced in 

1 It has been denied that Cagliostro was a Jew, but no definite proof 
to the contrary has been produced. M. Louis Dast6 in his book Marie- 
Antoinette et le complot magonnique, p. 70, gives passages from various 
contemporaries affirming his Jewish origin. Friedrich Bulau (Geheime 
Geschichten und Rathselhafte Menschen (1850), vol. i. p. 311) says that his 
father was Peter Balsamo, the son of a bookseller in Palermo — Antonio 
Balsamo — who appears to have been of the Jewish race, but Joseph (*. e. 
Cagliostro) was brought up in a seminary as a Christian. Bulau adds 
that it was Cagliostro who brought about the admission of Jews to the 
masonic lodges. Cagliostro himself pretended to know nothing of his 
origin, declaring that he was brought up in Arabia, in the palace of the 
Muphti at Medina. Replying to Mme. de la Motte's assertion that he 
was a Jew, he stated: " I was brought up as the son of Christian parents — 
I have never been a Jew or a Mohammedan," but he did not say that he 
was not of Jewish race. Bulau further relates that Cagliostro on a visit 
to England formed a friendship with Lord George Gordon, who in the 
following year made a plan to burn down London and incidentally became 
a Jew. (See Chambers's Biographical Dictionary, article on Lord George 
Gordon; Memoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro, p. 83 (1786 edition.) 

27 



28 WORLD REVOLUTION 

blood. The book stated that Illuminism was a conspiracy 
directed against thrones and altars, and that the first blows 
were to attain France, that after the fall of the French 
Monarchy, Rome must be attacked. Cagliostro learnt 
from the mouths of the Initiators that the secret society of 
which henceforth he formed a part possessed a mass of 
money dispersed in the banks of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, 
London, Genoa, and Venice. He himself drew a substan- 
tial sum destined for the expenses of propaganda, received 
the instructions of the Sect and went to Strasbourg." 1 It 
was in Strasbourg that Cagliostro then made the acquaint- 
ance of the Cardinal de Rohan, 2 who quickly fell under the 
spell of the hypnotic power which formed Cagliostro' s 
stock-in-trade and is still practised by propagandists of 
Illuminism. Soon after this the Cardinal introduced the 
magician to Mme. de la Motte, 3 and the " Affair of the 
Necklace " was the result. It was thus that the first blow 
at the French Monarchy was planned in the councils of 
the German Illuminati. 

Two years later a further success was achieved for 
Illuminism by the acquisition of Mirabeau. That great 
adventurer had been sent by the French Government 
on a mission to Berlin, and whilst in Germany became 
acquainted with some of the Illuminati, amongst others 
Nicolai and Leuchtsenring. Finally at Brunswick he 
formed a friendship with Mauvillon, who initiated him 
into the highest mysteries of the Order. 4 With superb 
effrontery Mirabeau then published a pamphlet entitled 
Essai sur la secte des Illumines, purporting to expose the 
follies of Illuminism but in reality describing the sect of 
the Martinistes, so as to throw a veil over the manoeuvres 
of the real Illuminati of Bavaria. 6 On his return to France, 
Mirabeau (who had assumed the illuminated name 
" Leonidas "), in co-operation with Talleyrand, introduced 
Illuminism into his lodge, which he had called the 
" Philalethes," 6 again throwing dust in the eyes of the 

1 Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise, ii. 81. 

2 Memoire pour le Comte de Cagliostro, p. 34. 
» Ibid. p. 44. 

! * Barruel, Memoir es sur le Jacobinisme, iv. 258; Robison, op. cit. 276. 
1 Clifford, Application of Barruel' s Memoirs of Jacobinism, p. xvii. 
• Barruel, op. cit. iv. 258, 373. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 29 

public, for, as we have seen, the " Philalethes " was a lodge 
of the Martinistes — and it was then decided that all the 
masonic lodges of France should be illuminized. Finding 
this task, however, beyond his powers, Mirabeau sent to 
Germany for two more adepts — Bode, known as Amelius, 
and the Baron de Busche, known as Bayard. At the lodge 
of the " Amis Reunis," where the members of the masonic 
lodges from all over France congregated, the mysteries of 
Illuminism were unveiled by the two German emissaries 
and the code of Weishaupt was formally placed on the 
table. 1 The result of this was that by March 1789 the 266 
lodges controlled by the Grand Orient were all " illumin- 
ized " without knowing it, for the Freemasons in general 
were not told the name of the sect that brought them these 
mysteries, and only a very small number were really 
initiated into the secret. 2 

In the following month the Revolution broke out. 

No one will deny that France at this period was ripe 
for drastic reforms. It is true that Babeuf, the Socialist, 
afterwards declared that the people of France were no 
worse off than the people of other countries, 3 and that 
Arthur Young, whose earlier views on the Revolution, 
written under Orleaniste influence, are always quoted as 
the strongest indictment of the Old Regime, was later on 
led by fuller knowledge to assert that " the old government 
of France, with all its faults, was certainly the best enjoyed 
by any considerable country in Europe, England alone 
excepted." 4 Still an examination of facts shows that there 
was very real cause for discontent, more on the part of the 
peasants than of the industrial workers. The Game Laws, 
or capitaineries — by which the crops of the peasants could 
be trampled down by the hunt or destroyed by the game — 
the salt tax or gabelle, the enforced labour known as the 
corvee, the dues paid to the landlords, and a host of other 
agricultural grievances, but above all, the iniquitous 
inequality of taxation, were burdens that the people very 
naturally resented. But it must not be forgotten that the 

1 Barruel, op. cit. iv. 280. 

2 Ibid. iv. 281. 

' Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, 142. 

4 Arthur Young, The Example of France, a Warning to Britain, p. 36. 



30 WORLD REVOLUTION 

King himself had continued to urge the abolition of these 
injustices, and that the attitude of the aristocracy as a 
whole was at this moment far from intractable. The phi- 
losophy of Rousseau had opened the eyes of many of the 
nobles to the need for reforms, and there was probably 
never a moment in the history of the world when a great 
regeneration might have been carried out with less violence. 

The work of the revolutionaries was not, however, to 
accelerate reforms, but to arrest them in order to increase 
popular discontent and bring themselves into power. The 
manner in which they accomplished their designs has been 
described in detail in my study of the French Revolution, 
and for the purpose of the present work the history of this 
period must be condensed as far as possible so as to indi- 
cate only the course of the social revolution. 

For, during the first three years of the great upheaval, 
the plan of Illuminism was obscured by the intrigues of 
political factions — the conspiracy of the Orleanistes to 
change the dynasty, and later the struggle of the Girondins 
to achieve political power. Meanwhile Prussia was playing 
an insidious part in the troubles of France. 

For many years before the Revolution the cherished 
scheme of Frederick the Great had been to break the 
Franco-Austrian alliance of 1756, which barred his way to 
power, and to establish a unified Germany under Prussian 
domination. In 1778 the Empress Maria Theresa in a 
letter to her daughter Marie Antoinette wrote these 
prophetic words : 

Every one in Europe knows to what point one can count on 
the King of Prussia and how far one can depend on his word. 
France has been able to perceive this under diverse circum- 
stances. And yet that is the sovereign who aspires to erect 
himself as protector and dictator of Germany. What is still 
more extraordinary, the Powers do not think of uniting to pre- 
vent such a misfortune, from which, sooner or later, all will 
have to endure the disastrous consequences. What I put forward 
concerns all the Powers of Europe; the future does not appear 
to me under a smiling aspect. Yet to-day we endure the influ- 
ence of that military and despotic monarchy which recognizes no 
principle, but which, in all that it does and all that it undertakes, 
always pursues the same goal, its own interest and its exclusive 
advantage. If this Prussian principle is allowed to continue to 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 31 

gain ground, what hope is there for those who will succeed us 
one day? 1 

As a result of warnings such as these Marie Antoinette 
adopted that anti-Prussian attitude for which she paid so 
dearly, and Frederick, centring all his hatred of Austria on 
the luckless Dauphine of France, circulated libels against 
her through his agent von der Goltz, who combined the 
role of ambassador and spy at the Court of Versailles. 
Such indeed was the thoroughness of Hohenzollern 
methods that he had even taken the trouble to enter into 
relations with an obscure thief in France named Carra, 
afterwards to become a leading revolutionary, who appa- 
rently proved so efficient that Frederick saw fit to reward 
him with a gold snuff-box in recognition of his services. 
The policy of Frederick the Great was faithfully carried 
out by his successor, Frederick William II., and Prussian 
agents, chief amongst them a Jew named Ephraim, were 
sent over to Paris to mingle with the revolutionary mobs 
and inflame their passions. 

The intrigue that directed the opening stages of the 
Revolution was, however, the Orleaniste conspiracy, and it 
was by this faction that the artificial scarcity of grain was 
created during the spring and summer of 1789, and that the 
siege of the Bastille on July 14 and the march on Versailles 
on October 5 were organized. Now it has been objected by 
several critics that in my descriptions of these days I over- 
rated the importance of the Orleaniste conspiracy, and that 
the feeble character of the Due d' Orleans makes it impos- 
sible to see in him a determined conspirator. The latter 
fact is true, but it will be noticed that I did not attribute to 
the Duke himself the organization of the conspiracy, but 
to his supporters, notably Choderlos de Laclos. Since, 
however, in research of this kind no progress can be made 
unless one is willing to reconstruct one's view in the light 
of further knowledge, I frankly admit that in my French 
Revolution I underrated the importance of Illuminism, and 
it is therefore quite possible that part of the organization 
I attributed to the genius of Choderlos de Laclos was in 
reality the work of illuminized Freemasonry. This would 

1 Deschamps, op. cit. pp. 22-28, quoting from the German press. 



32 WORLD REVOLUTION 

in no way affect the descriptions of the mechanism by 
which the so-called popular risings were brought about, 
but would supply a further explanation of its efficiency. 

But since the Due d' Orleans, whilst lending himself to 
the plan of usurping the throne of France, was at the same 
time Grand Masterjof the Grand Orient, and all the revo- 
lutionary leaders, Orleaniste or otherwise, were members 
of the lodges, it is obviously impossible to disentangle the 
threads of the two intrigues. How can we know which of 
the Duke's supporters were genuinely working for a change 
of dynasty and which for the overthrow of monarchy and 
all ordered government? The plan of Weishaupt was 
always to make use of princes to further their own ends, 
and it would be interesting to discover whether the loans 
raised by the Due d'Orleans in Amsterdam and England, 
wherewith, as the Revolution proceeded he replenished his 
coffers, came from the funds of the Illuminati in those 
places. 

To whatever agency we attribute it, however, the 
mechanism of the French Revolution distinguishes it from 
all previous revolutions. Hitherto the isolated revolutions 
that had taken place throughout the history of the world 
can be clearly recognized as spontaneous movements 
brought about by oppression or by a political faction 
enjoying some measure of popular support, and therefore 
endeavouring to satisfy the demands of the people. But in 
the French Revolution we see for the first time that plan in 
operation which has been carried on right up to the present 
moment — the systematic attempt to create grievances in 
order to exploit them. 

The most remarkable instance of engineered agitation 
during the early stages of the Revolution was the extraor- 
dinary incident known to history as " The Great Fear," 
when on the same day, July 22, 1789, and almost at the 
same hour, in towns and villages all over France, a panic 
was created by the announcement that brigands were 
approaching and therefore that all good citizens must take 
up arms. The messengers who brought the news post-haste 
on horseback in many cases exhibited placards headed 
" Edict of the King," bearing the words "The King orders 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 33 

all chateaux to be burnt down; he only wishes to keep his 
own! " And the people, obedient to these commands, 
seized upon every weapon they could find and set them- 
selves to the task of destruction. The object of the con- 
spirators was thus achieved — the arming of the populace 
against law and order, a device which ever since 1789 has 
always formed the first item in the,programme of the social 
revolution. 

It is said that the idea originated with Adrien Dupont 
and has therefore been attributed to the Orleaniste con- 
spiracy, but Dupont was not only an intime of the Due 
d' Orleans, but an adept of illuminized Freemasonry, and 
the organization of the " Great Fear " may well have been 
masonic. This explanation seems the more probable when 
we remember that the plan of the lodges even before they 
became illuminized had been " to make a revolution for the 
benefit of the bourgeoisie with the people as instruments." 
With this end in view the conspirators held up the food 
supplies, blocked all reforms in the National Assembly, and 
organized demonstrations directly opposed to the interests 
of the people. From the attack on the factory of Reveillon 
in April 1789 to the murder of the baker Francois in 
October, nearly every outrage was directed against men 
who had fed and befriended the poor. 

Under the domination of the Tiers Etat — almost 
entirely composed of bourgeoisie far more occupied with 
their own grievances against the nobles than with the suf- 
ferings of the people — the legislation carried out by the 
National Assembly cannot be described by so mild a word 
as " reactionary " ; it was frankly and ruthlessly repressive 
of all Socialistic or even democratic ideas. Not only was 
property safeguarded by new laws, but suffrage was 
extended only to citizens possessing certain incomes, whilst 
the trade unions that had existed peacefully under the 
name of " working-men's corporations " were rigorously 
suppressed by the famous " Loi Chapelier " on June 14, 
1791. 

By this glaringly anti-democratic act working-men 
were forbidden to " name presidents, keep registers, make 
resolutions, deliberate or draw up regulations on their pre- 



34 WORLD REVOLUTION 

tended common interests," or to agree on any fixed scale of 
wages. The wording of the first Article runs as follows : 

The annihilation of all kinds of corporations of citizens 
belonging to the same state or profession being one of the funda- 
mental bases of the French Constitution, it is forbidden to 
reestablish them on any pretext or under any form whatsoever. 

This law S'was passed without a word of protest from 
Robespierre or any of the so-called democrats of the 
Assembly. 1 

As to the " Constitution " held up before the eyes of 
the people as the supreme benefit the Revolution was to 
confer on them, it will be noticed that every step on the 
road to its final promulgation was marked by a fresh out- 
break of revolutionary agitation. No sooner had its first 
principles been placed before the Assembly by Mounier, 
Clermont Tonnerre, and other honest democrats than a 
price was placed on the heads of these men by the revolu- 
tionaries of the Palais Royal, and an attempt was made to 
march on Versailles. When two years later the King finally 
accepted the Constitution, this immense concession to the 
demands of the people, which if the Revolution had been 
made by the people would undoubtedly have ended it, 
became the signal for a fresh outbreak of revolutionary 
fury, expressed by the hideous massacre known as the 
" Glaciere d' Avignon." Can we not believe then that there 
may be some truth in the Pere Deschamps' statement that 
" the cry of ' Constitution ' has been in all countries the 
word of command of the Secret Societies," that is to say, 
the rallying cry of revolution? 2 We shall find further con- 
firmation of this theory later in the history of the revolu- 
tionary movement in Russia. 

Thus during the first two years of the Revolution 
Illuminism concealed itself under the guise of popular 
tumults, but with the formation of the Jacobin Clubs all 
over France its scheme of domination becomes more 
apparent. 

These societies, Robison in his Proofs of a Conspiracy 
declares, were organized by the revolutionary committees 

1 Buchez et Roux, Histoire parlementaire, x. 193. 

2 Les Societes secretes et la societe, by P. Deschamps and Claudio Jannet. 
p. 242. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 35 

under the direct inspiration of the Bavarian Illuminati, 
who taught them their " method of doing business, of 
managing their correspondence, and of procuring and 
training pupils." It was thus that at a given signal insur- 
rections could be engineered simultaneously in all parts of 
the country or that the Faubourgs could be summoned 
forth at the word of command. 

The plan of Weishaupt for enlisting women in the move- 
ment had been adopted from the beginning by the revolu- 
tionaries, and we see in the declamations of Theroigne de 
Mericourt, 1 and of the militant suffragette Olympe de 
Gouges, how cleverly the idea of " giving them hints of 
emancipation " was carried out. Madame Roland, likewise 
glorying in the political power the Revolution had brought 
her, little dreamt whither the movement was tending — 
to the disappearance from the stage of all women except 
the furies of the guillotine. Olympe and Madame Roland 
paid for their illusions with their heads; Theroigne, pub- 
licly flogged in the Tuileries gardens by the tricoteuses of 
Robespierre, lost her reason and died raving mad in the 
Salp6triere some years later. For in times of revolution it 
is not the women of brains and energy who can ever take 
a leading part, but only those whose disordered imagina- 
tions and perverted passions inspire them with a ferocity 
more horrible than that of man. 

The Jacobins, in playing on these passions amongst the 
women who assembled at the meetings held three times 
weekly at their " Societes Fraternelles," fanned their fury 
into flame and prepared those terrible bands of harpies 
who committed the atrocities of August 10th. 

So complete had the organization of the Jacobin Clubs 
now become that during 1791 and 1792 all the masonic 
lodges of France were closed down and Philippe Egalite 
sent in his resignation as Grand Master. This was held 
advisable for several reasons : the Jacobins, once the mas- 
ters of France, could not with safety tolerate the existence 

1 Theroigne thus expressed her views on the Revolution to an 'English 
contemporary: " Society is undergoing a change, a grand reorganization, 
and women are about to resume their rights. We shall no more be nattered 
in order to be enslaved; these arms have dethroned the tyrant and con- 
quered freedom " (France in 1802, Letters of Redhead Yorke, p. 62). 



36 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of any secret association that might be used as a cover for 
counter-revolutionary schemes; moreover, as the great 
plan of Illuminism was by this time in process of fulfilment, 
what further need was there for secrecy ? Projects formerly 
discussed with bated breath in the lodges could now be 
openly avowed in the tribune of the Jacobin Clubs, and 
nothing remained but to put them into execution. 

It was not, however, until after the overthrow of the 
monarchy on the 10th of August that the work of demoli- 
tion began on the vast scale planned by Weishaupt. From 
this moment the role of Illuminism can be clearly traced 
through the succeeding phases of the Revolution. Thus it 
is from the 10th of August onwards that we find the tri- 
colour, banner of the usurper, replaced by the red flag of 
the social revolution, whilst the cry of " Vive notre roi 
d' Orleans! " gives way to the masonic watchword "Liberty 
Equality, Fraternity! " During the massacres in the 
prisons that followed in September the assassins were 
observed to make masonic signs to the victims and to spare 
those who knew how to reply. Amongst those not spared 
was the Abbe Lefranc, who had published a pamphlet 
unveiling the designs of Freemasonry at the beginning of 
the Revolution. 

The proclamation issued by the Convention in Decem- 
ber summoning the proletariats of Europe to rise in revolt 
against all ordered government was the first trumpet-call 
to World Revolution, and it was the failure to respond to 
this appeal that forced the Jacobins into a " national " 
attitude they had never intended to assume. 

In November 1793 the campaign against religion, inaug- 
urated by the massacre of the priests in September 
1792 was carried out all over France. In the ceme- 
teries the cherished motto of the Illuminati, " Death is an 
eternal sleep," was posted up by order of the Illuminatus 
11 Anaxagoras " Chaumette. The Feasts of Reason cele- 
brated in the churches of Paris were the mere corollary to 
Weishaupt 's teaching that " Reason should be the only 
code of Man "; and Robison states that the actual cere- 
monies which took place, when women of easy morals were 
enthroned as goddesses, were modelled on Weishaupt's 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 37 

plan of an " Eroterion " or festival in honour of the god of 
Love. 1 

It was likewise to Weishaupt's declamations against 
11 the mercantile tribe " that the devastation of the manu- 
facturing towns of France and the ruin of her merchants 
can be traced, whilst the campaign against education 
formed a further part of the scheme for destroying civiliza- 
tion. The Terrorists in burning down the libraries and 
guillotining Lavoisier, on the plea that " the Republic has 
no need of chemists," were simply putting into practice 
Weishaupt's theory that the sciences were " children of 
necessity, the complicated needs of a state contrary to 
Nature, the inventions of vain and empty brains." " The 
system of persecution against men of talents was organ- 
ized," a contemporary declared — organized, as was the 
whole system of the Terror, by the Illuminati and carried 
out by men who had accepted the guiding principle of the 
sect. For it was Weishaupt's favourite maxim, " The end 
justifies the means," that we find again in the mouths of 
the Jacobins under the form of " Tout est permis a qui- 
conque agit dans le sens de la Revolution." The Reign of 
Terror was the logical outcome of this premise. 

But this does not imply that all the Terrorists were 
Illuminati, that is to say, conscious adepts of Weishaupt. 
It is true that, as we have seen, all were Freemasons at the 
beginning of the Revolution, but it is probable that few 
were initiated into the inner mysteries of the Order. The 
art of Illuminism lay in enlisting dupes as well as adepts, 
and by encouraging the dreams of honest visionaries or the 
schemes of fanatics, by flattering the vanity of ambitious 
egoists, by working on unbalanced brains, or by playing on 
such passions as greed of gold or power, to make men of 
totally divergent aims serve the secret purpose of the sect. 
Indeed, amongst all the revolutionary leaders one man 
alone stands out as a pure Illuminatus — the Prussian 
Baron, Anacharsis Clootz. 

1 The idea seems to have been long current in Germany. " In 1751 an 
impious work, dedicated to Frederick II. (the Great), published as a frontis- 
piece the scene of the adoration of a prostitute which was destined to be 
realised on the 20th of Brumaire 1793 on the altar of Notre Dame of Paris " 
(Deschamps, Les Societes secretes, ii. 98, quoting Der Goetze der Humanititt 
oder das Positive der Freimaurerei, Freiburg Herder, 1875, pp. 75-80). 



38 WORLD REVOLUTION 

In the utterances of Clootz we find the doctrines of 
Weishaupt expressed with absolute fidelity. Thus in his 
Rgpublique Universelle the scheme of Weishaupt for weld- 
ing the whole human race into " one good and happy 
family " is set forth at length : " One common interest! one 
mind! one Nation! " cries Anacharsis. " Do you wish," he 
asks again, " to exterminate all tyrants at a blow? Declare 
then authentically that sovereignty consists in the common 
patriotism and solidarity of the totality of men, of the one 
and only nation. . . . The Universe will form one State, 
the State of united individuals, the immutable empire of 
the great Germany — the Universal Republic.' ' Or again : 
" When the Tower of London falls like the tower of Paris 
it will be all over with tyrants. All the people forming 
only one nation, all the trades forming only one trade, all 
interests forming only one interest," etc. It was Clootz, 
moreover, who played the most active part in the cam- 
paign against religion. Was it not he who had invented 
the word to " septemberize," regretting that they had not 
" septemberized " more priests in the prisons, and who 
openly declared himself " the personal enemy of Jesus 
Christ " ? The fact that he never revealed himself to be 
an Illuminatus and never referred to Weishaupt was in 
strict accordance with the rule of the Order, which we shall 
find adhered to by every adept in turn. * ' The Illuminati, ' ' 
Professor Renner had declared before the Bavarian Court 
of Inquiry, " fear nothing so much as being recognized 
under this name," and frightful punishment was attached 
to the betrayal of the secret. It is thus that historians, 
unaware of the sources whence Clootz drew his theories, 
or anxious to conceal the role of Illuminism in the revolu- 
tionary movement, describe him as an amiable eccentric 
of no importance. In reality Clootz was one of the most 
important figures of the whole Revolution if viewed from 
the modern standpoint, for it was he alone of all his day 
who embodied the spirit of anti-patriotism and Interna- 
tionalism which, defeated in France of 1793, finally secured 
its triumph on the ruins of the Russian Empire of 1917. 

It was Clootz 's Internationalism that ended by antag- 
onizing Robespierre. When at the Jacobin Club the 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 39 

Prussian Baron declared that " his heart was French and 
sans-culotte " but at the same time proposed that as soon as 
"the French army came in sight of the Austrian and Prus- 
sian soldiers they should, instead of attacking the enemy, 
throw down their own arms and advance towards them 
dancing in a friendly manner," * Robespierre, " who was 
not without a certain penetration in his hatreds . . . 
acidly apostrophized him, saying that he distrusted all 
these foreigners who pretended to be more patriotic than 
the French themselves, that he suspected the good faith of 
a so-called sans-culotte who had an income of 100,000 
livres," 2 and he ended by sending Clootz and his fellow- 
atheists Hebert, Chaumette, Ronsin, and Vincent to the 
scaffold. 

Was Robespierre then not an Illuminatus? He was 
certainly a Freemason, and Prince Kropotkine definitely 
states that he belonged to one of the lodges of the Illumi- 
nati founded by Weishaupt. But contemporaries declare 
that he had not been fully initiated and acted as the tool 
rather than as the agent of the conspiracy. Moreover, 
Robespierre was the disciple not only of Weishaupt but of 
Rousseau, and under the inspiration of the Control Social 
had elaborated a scheme of his own which held none of the 
aimless destructiveness of the Illuminati. Thus Robes- 
pierre clearly recognized the necessity for the vast social 
revolution indicated by Weishaupt; but whilst Weishaupt 
fixed his eyes on the explosion and " smiled at the thought 
of universal conflagration," Robespierre regarded anarchy 
simply as a means to an end — the reconstruction of 
society according to the plan he had evolved with the 
co-operation of Saint- Just, which was simply an embry- 
onic form of the system known later as State Socialism. 

This statement will of course be challenged by Social- 
ists, who have always — for reasons I shall show later — 
denied the Robespierrean origin of their doctrines. It is 
true of course that the word Socialism was not invented 
until some forty years later, but it would be absurd by 
means of such a quibble to disassociate Socialism from its 

1 France in 1802, Letters of Henry Redhead Yorke, p. 72. 

2 Biographie Michaud, article " Clootz." 



40 WORLD REVOLUTION 

earliest exponents. M. Aulard is no doubt perfectly right 
in saying that Robespierre's Declaration of the Rights of 
Man contains " all the essentials of French Socialism 
founded on the principles of 1789 and such as Louis Blanc 
popularized in 1848. It is for having proposed these 
Socialistic articles, it is for having proposed this charter 
for Socialism, and not for having vaguely declaimed 
against the rich and sounded the praises of mediocrity, 
that Robespierre after his death, as much in our own 
century as in the time of Babeuf , became the prophet of 
many of those amongst us who dreamt of a social renova- 
tion, and he remained so until the period when German 
influence made French Socialists temporarily forget the 
French origins of their doctrines.' ' * Robespierre may 
indeed, in the language of Socialism, be described as more 
" advanced " than his French successors of the early nine- 
teenth century, for he anticipated the Marxian theory of 
the class war, which was not again to find acceptance in 
France until adopted by the Guesdists and Syndicalists 
at the very end of the century. Robespierre's cherished 
maxim, " The rich man is the enemy of the sans-culotte" 2 
contains the whole spirit of the class war. We have in fact 
only to transpose the phrases current in 1793 into their 
modern equivalents to recognize their identity with modern 
Socialistic formulas. Thus the magic phrase " dictator- 
ship of the proletariat " — of which it is doubtful whether 
any one understands the precise meaning — was expressed 
at that date by the words " Sovereignty of the People," 
and formed the text of Robespierre's gospel. " The 
people," he wrote, " must be the object of all political 
institutions." 3 All other classes of the community were 
to be entirely unrepresented or, preferably, not to be 
allowed to exist. 

Even the theory of "wage slavery," later on proclaimed 
by Marx, was already current during the Reign of Terror, 
and on this point we have the evidence of a contemporary. 

1 Aulard, Histoire politique de la Revolution Frangaise, iv. 47; see also 
Aulard, Etudes et legons sur la Revolution Frangaise, ii. 51. 

2 Papiers trouves chez Robespierre, i. 15. 

3 Discours et rapports de Robespierre, edited by Charles Vellay, p. 8; 
see also p. 327. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 41 

" The plan of the Jacobins," wrote the democrat Fan tin 
D^sodoards, " was to stir up the rich against the poor and the 
poor against the rich. To the latter they said: ' You have made 
a few sacrifices in favour of the Revolution, but fear, not patriot- 
ism, was the motive.' To the former they said: ' The rich man 
has no bowels of compassion; under the pretext of feeding the 
poor by providing them with work he exercises over them a supe- 
riority contrary to the views of Nature and to Republican prin- 
ciples. Liberty will always be precarious as long as one part of the 
nation lives on wages from the other. In order to preserve its inde- 
pendence, it is necessary 7 that every one should be rich or that 
every one should be poor.' " l 

It will be seen then that the whole theory of the class 
war, and even the very phrases by which it was to be 
promoted, as also the necessity for abolishing the relation- 
ship of capital and labour, which is usually associated with 
Marx, were ideas that existed twenty -five years before his 
birth. We cannot doubt that it is to Robespierre and 
Saint-Just that they must be mainly attributed. Robes- 
pierre, as we know, definitely advocated the abolition of 
inheritance. " The property of a man," he said, " must 
return after his death to the public domain of society "; 
and although he was known to declare that " equality of 
wealth is a chimera," it was no doubt because he well knew 
that wealth can never be evenly distributed, and therefore 
that the only way to achieve equality is by the process 
known to-day as the nationalization of all wealth and 
property. " This," says the editor of his discourses, 
M. Charles Vellay, " is what the Revolution means to him 
— it is to lead to a sort of Communism, and it is here that 
he separates himself from his colleagues, that he isolates 
himself, and that resistance gathers around him." In 1840 
the Socialist Cabet, who had received the Robespierriste 
tradition direct from the contemporary Buonarotti, 
expressed the same opinion: 

All the proposals of the Comite de Salut Public during the 
last five months, the opinions of Bodson and of Buonarotti — 
both initiated into the profound views of Robespierre, both his 
admirers, and both Communists, — give us the conviction that 
Robespierre and Saint-Just only blamed the untimely invocation 

1 Fantin D£sodoards, Histoire philosophique de la Revolution Frangaise h 
iv. 344. 



42 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of Community by declared atheists {i.e. Clootz, Hubert, etc.), 
and that they themselves marched towards Communism by- 
paths they judged more suited to success. 1 

Still more clinching evidence of Robespierre's real aim 
is, however, provided by the Communist Babeuf, who 
wrote these words in 1795 : 

He (Robespierre) thought that equality would only be a vain 
word as long as the owners of property were allowed to tyrannize 
over the great mass, and that in order to destroy their power 
and to take the mass of citizens out of their dependence there 
was no way but to place all property in the hands of the government. 2 

In the face of this statement how can any one deny that 
Robespierre was a State Socialist in precisely the sense in 
which we understand the term to-day? That the State 
was of course to be represented by Robespierre himself and 
his chosen associates it is needless to add, but what Com- 
munist or group of Communists have ever excluded the 
hypothesis of their own supremacy from their plan of a 
Socialist State? " L'Etat c'est nous " is the maxim of all 
such theorists. 

On one point, however, Robespierre differed from most 
of the members of the same school of thought who came 
after him in that he showed himself a consistent Socialist, 
for he had the singleness of aim, aided by an entire want of 
moral scruples, to push his theories to their logical con- 
clusion. A Labour extremist in this country recently 
described the modern Bolsheviks as " Socialists with the 
courage of their opinions," and the same description might 
be applied to Robespierre and Saint- Just. Thus Robes- 
pierre did not talk hypocritically of " peaceful revolu- 
tion "; he knew that revolution is never peaceful, that in 
its very essence it implies onslaught met with resistance', 
a resistance that can only be overcome by an absolute dis- 
regard for human life. " I will walk willingly with my feet 
in blood and tears," said his coadjutor Saint- Just ; and this, 
whether he admits it or not, must be the maxim of every 
revolutionary Socialist who believes that any methods are 
justifiable for the attainment of his end. 

1 Histoire populaire de la Revolution Frangaise, by Cabet (1840). 
8 Sur le systeme de la depopulation, p. 28. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 43 

The Reign of Terror was therefore not only the out- 
come of Illuminism but also the logical result of Socialistic 
doctrines. Thus, for example, the attacks on civilization 
carried out in the summer of 1793, the burning of the 
libraries and the destruction of treasures of art and litera- 
ture, were all part of the scheme of Weishaupt, but they 
were also perfectly consistent with the Socialistic theory 
of the " sovereignty of the people." For if one considers 
that in the least educated portion of the community all 
wisdom and all virtue reside, the only logical thing to do 
is to burn the libraries and close down the schools. Of 
what avail is it to train the intellectual faculties of a child 
if manual labour alone is to be held honourable? Of what 
use to civilize him if in civilization is to be found the bane 
of mankind ? It is idle in one breath to talk of the beauties 
of education and in the next to advocate the " dictatorship 
of the proletariat " and condemn all educated people as 
bourgeois. 

Of this strange contradiction the Jacobins of France, 
like the Bolsheviks of Russia, at first were guilty. Mag- 
nificent schemes were propounded to the Convention for 
" ecoles normales," " ecoles centrales," etc.; regiments of 
professors were to be commandeered for the instruction of 
youth; but all these schemes came to nought, for by the 
end of 1794 public education was said to be non-existent, 1 
owing obviously to the fact that meanwhile the emissaries 
of the Comite de Salut Public had busied themselves 
destroying books and pictures and persecuting all men of 
education. 

This campaign against the bourgeoisie found its prin- 
, cipal support in Robespierre. It was he who first sounded 
the call to arms which has since become the war-cry of the 
social revolution. " Internal dangers come from the 
bourgeois; in order to conquer the bourgeois we must rouse 
the people, we must procure arms for them and make them 
angry." 2 The natural consequence of this policy carried 
out against the mercantile bourgeoisie by the attacks on 
the manufacturing towns of France was of course to create 

1 Joseph de Maistre, Melanges inedits, pp. 122, 124, 125, quoting con- 
temporary documents. 

1 Papier s trouves chez Robespierre, ii. 15. 



44 WORLD REVOLUTION 

vast unemployment. Already the destruction of the aris- 
tocracy had thrown numberless workers on the streets, 
so that by 1791 nearly all the hands that had ministered to 
the needs or caprices of the rich were idle, and thousands 
of hairdressers, gilders, bookbinders, tailors, embroiderers, 
and domestic servants wandered about Paris and collected 
in crowds " to debate on the misery of their situation." 

The situation must always arise, if the leisured classes 
are suddenly destroyed either by killing them off or by a 
ruthless conscription of capital. Socialists are fond of 
describing luxury workers as parasites; obviously then if 
one destroys the animal on which the parasite lives one 
must destroy the parasite too. It is possible that by a very 
slow and gradual redistribution of wealth luxury workers 
might be more or less absorbed into the essential trades, 
but even this is very doubtful. At any rate the attempt to 
abolish the luxury trades at a blow must inevitably lead to 
unemployment on a vast scale, for not only will the luxury 
workers themselves be idle, but, since all classes are inter- 
dependent, many of the workers in the essential trades who 
depend on them for a livelihood will be idle likewise. Any 
sudden dislocation of the industrial system must therefore 
mean national bankruptcy. 

This is precisely what happened in France ■ — as even 
Socialist writers admit. Malon in his Histoire du socialisme 
illustrates, by a picture of a scene in a Paris street, the 
situation described by Michelet in the words: 

The Revolution was to open a career to the peasant but 
closed it to the workman. The first pricked up his ear at the 
decrees which placed the goods of the clergy on sale ; the second, 
silent and sombre, dismissed from his workshop, wandered about 
all day with folded arms. 1 

The condition of the industrial workers was still further 
aggravated by the legislation of the Terror. Not only was 
the Loi Chapelier against trade unions confirmed and 
severely enforced by the Comite de Salut Public under the 
domination of Robespierre, but the workers were obliged 
to toil very much harder than ever before. This point, 
systematically ignored by historians, constitutes one of the 

1 Malon, Histoire du socialisme, i. 267, 297. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 45 

chief ironies of the period and illustrates the ingenious 
method by which the so-called advocates of the People's 
Sovereignty contrived to dupe the People to their own 
undoing. Thus, under the pretext of abolishing the obso- 
lete customs and superstitions of the Old Regime, the 
workers were deprived of all the holidays they had enjoyed 
in honour of the Saints or the festivals of the Church. 
Under the monarchy not only every one of these days but 
also the day following it had been a holiday, and neither 
on Sunday nor on Monday was any work done. 

By substituting " decadi," that is to say one day in 
every ten, for Sunday and making it only a half -holiday, 
the new masters of France added three and one-half work- 
ing days to even- fortnight. The result per year is shown in^ 
an amusing article of the Moniteur for September 9, 1794, 
entitled " National Idleness," of which the following is an 
extract : 

Easter, Christmas, All Saints, days of the Virgin, of Kings, 
Saint Martin, fifty thousand patrons of parishes and priories 
... all these fetes and their morrows have been suppressed; by 
expelling the saints from their shrines and all the priests from 
their confessionals thirty-six half Sundays are left us {i.e. the 
thirty-six decadis which occurred in the course of the year, which 
were half -holidays) . The Revolution has consecrated to work 
at least a hundred and twenty days which the Pope and his 
Elder Son (the title given to the King of France) left to idleness 
in France. This national idleness was a tax on misery, a tax 
that diminished the revenues of the State and increased expenses 
for alms, assistance, and hospitals. Permission to work is a 
charity which costs nothing to the public treasure and which 
will bring to it considerable funds. All is new in France — 
weather, mankind, the earth, and the sea. . . . The Republican 
year gives to work four months more than the papal and monarchic 
year. 1 

It is not necessary to be a believer in the principle of 
Ca' Canny as a remedy for unemployment to recognize 
that the result of this legislation was to reduce the number 
of hands required and leave the vast reserve of labour 
which enables the employer to make his own terms with 
the workers. It will be seen that this expedient which State 
Socialists are fond of denouncing as one of the evils of 

1 Moniteur, xxi. 699. 



46 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Capitalism was practised under the regime of that first 
experimenter in State Socialism — Maximilien Robes- 
pierre. 

But towards the end of 1793 it became evident that 
there was no possibility of absorbing the residuum created, 
for the attacks on the manufacturing towns of France had 
dealt the final blow to trade and the Republic found itself 
faced by hundreds of thousands of working-men for whom 
it could not find employment. It was then that the Comit6 
de Salut Public, anticipating the Malthusian theory, 
embarked on its fearful project — the system of depopu- 
lation. 

That this plan really existed it is impossible to doubt 
in the face of overwhelming contemporary evidence. In 
The French Revolution I quoted in this connection the 
testimony of no less than twenty- two witnesses — all 
revolutionaries ; * and since then I have found further cor- 
roboration of the fact in the letters of an Englishman, 
named Redhead Yorke, who travelled in France in 1802 
and made particular inquiries on this question from the 
ally of Robespierre, the painter David : 

I asked him whether it was true that a project had been in 
contemplation to reduce the population of France to one-third 
of its present number. He answered that it had been seriously 
discussed and that Dubois Crance was the author. 

In another passage Yorke states: 

Monsieur de la Metherie assured me that during the time of 
the Revolutionary Tribunals, it was in serious contemplation to 
reduce the population of France to 14,000,000. Dubois Crance 
was a very distinguished and enthusiastic partisan of this 
humane and philosophical policy. 2 

It will be noticed that there is here a discrepancy in the 
exact figures ; the population of France at that period being 
twenty-five millions, the proposal to reduce it to one-third 
was to bring it down to approximately eight millions. The 
difference then lies between the projects of reducing it by 
one-third or to one-third — issues which Yorke evidently 

1 The French Revolution, pp. 426-428. 

2 France in 1802, Letters of Redhead Yorke, edited by J. A. C. Sykes 
(Heinemann), 1906, pp. 102, 127. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 47 

confused; but it was precisely on this point that the 
opinions of the Terrorists differed. Thus we are told that 
d'Antonelle of the Revolutionary Tribunal advocated the 
former and more moderate policy, but that a reduction to 
eight millions, that is to say to one-third, was the figure 
generally agreed on by the leaders. 

The necessity for this lay not only in the fact that there 
was not even enough bread, money, or property to go 
round, but also, after the destruction of the aristocracy 
and bourgeoisie, not enough work. 

" In the eyes of Maximilien Robespierre and his council," 
says Babeuf, " depopulation was indispensable because the cal- 
culation had been made that the French population was in 
excess of the resources of the soil and of the requirements of 
useful industry, that is to say, that with us men jostled each other 
too much for each to be able to live at ease ; that hands were too 
numerous for the execution of all works of essential utility — and 
this is the horrible conclusion, that since the superabundant 
population could only amount to so much ... a portion of 
sans-culottes must be sacrificed; that this rubbish could be cleared 
up to a certain quantity, and that means must be found for 
doing it." 

The system of the Terror was thus the answer to the 
problem of unemployment — unemployment brought 
about on a vast scale by the destruction of the luxury 
trades. 

If the hecatombs carried out all over France never 
reached the huge proportions planned by the leaders, it 
was not for want of what they described as " energy in the 
art of revolution." Night and day the members of the 
Comite de Salut Public sat round the green-covered table 
in the Tuileries with the map of France spread out before 
them, pointing out towns and villages and calculating how 
many heads they must have in each department. Night 
and day the Revolutionary Tribunal passed on, without 
judgment, its never-ending stream of victims, whilst near 
by the indefatigable Fouquier bent over his lists for the 
morrow, and in the provinces the proconsuls Carrier, 
Freron, Collot d'Herbois, Lebon toiled unremittingly at 
the same Herculean task. 

Compared to the results they had hoped to achieve the 



48 WORLD REVOLUTION 

mortality was insignificant; compared to the accounts 
given us by " the conspiracy of history " it was terrific. 
The popular conception of the Reign of Terror as a pro- 
cession of powdered heads going to the guillotine seems 
strangely naive when we read the actual records of the 
period. Thus during the great Terror in Paris about 2800 
victims perished, and out of these approximately 500 were 
of the aristocracy, 1000 of the bourgeoisie, and 1000 
working-class. These estimates are not a surmise, since 
they can be proved by the actual register of the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal published both by Campardon and 
Wallon, also by the contemporary Prudhomme, 1 and they 
are accepted as accurate by the Robespierriste historian 
Louis Blanc. 2 

According to Prudhomme the total number of victims 
drowned, guillotined, or shot all over France amounted to 
300,000 and of this number the nobles sacrificed were an 
almost negligible quantity, only about 3000 in all. 3 

At Nantes 500 children of the people were killed in one 
butchery, and according to an English contemporary 144 
poor women who sewed shirts for the army were thrown 
into the river. 4 

Such was the period during which Carlyle dared to 
assure us that " The Twenty-Five Millions of France " 
had " never suffered less." 

But this frightful mortality was not the only dreadful 
feature of the Terror — ruin, misery, starvation were the 
lot of all but the band of tyrants who had seized the reins of 
power, and this state of affairs continued long after the 
reign of Robespierre ended. The conception of France 
rising like a phoenix from that great welter of blood and 
horror is as mythical as the allegory from which it is taken 
and has existed only in the minds of posterity. Not a single 
contemporary who lived through the Revolution has ever 
pretended that it was anything but a ghastly failure. The 
conspiracy of history alone has created the myth. 

Yet in France the truth is at last beginning to be 

1 Prudhomme, Crimes de la Revolution, vol. vi. Table VI. 

* Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution, xi. 155. 

* Prudhomme, Crimes de la Revolution, vol. vi. Table VI. 

* Playfair's History of Jacobinism, p. 789. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 49 

known. Thus M. Madelin, the most impartial and enlight- 
ened of modern historians, has described the condition of 
France at the end of the Terror in these forcible words : 

France is demoralized. She is exhausted — this is the last 
trait of this country in ruins. There is no longer any public 
opinion, or rather this opinion is made up only of hatred. They 
hate the Directors (members of the Directory) and they hate the 
deputies; they hate the Terrorists and they hate the chouans 
(the Royalists of La Vendee) ; they hate the rich and they hate 
the anarchists; they hate the Revolution and the counter- 
revolution. . . . But where hatred reaches paroxysm is in the 
case of the newly rich. What is the good of having destroyed 
Kings, nobles, and aristocrats, since deputies, farmers, and 
tradesmen take their place? What cries of hatred! ... Of all 
the ruins found and increased by the Directory — ruins of 
parties, ruins of power, ruins of national representation, ruins of 
churches, ruins of finances, nuns of homes, nuns of consciences, 
ruins of intellects — there is nothing more pitiable than this : 
the ruin of the national character. 1 

Eight years after the ending of the Terror, France had 
not yet recovered from its ravages. According to Redhead 
Yorke, even the usually accepted theory of agricultural 
prosperity is erroneous. 

Nothing can exceed the wretchedness of the implements of 
husbandry employed but the wretched appearance of the persons 
using them. Women at the plough and young girls driving a 
team give but an indifferent idea of the progress of agriculture 
under the Republic. There are no farmhouses dispersed over 
the fields. The farmers reside together in remote villages, a cir- 
cumstance calculated to retard the business of cultivation. The 
interiors of the houses are filthy, the farmyards in the utmost 
disorder, and the miserable condition of the cattle sufficiently 
bespeaks the poverty of their owner. 2 

Everywhere beggars assailed the traveller for alms; in 
spite of the reduced population unemployment was rife, 
education was at a standstill, and owing to the destruction 
of the old nobility and clergy, and the fact that the new 
rich who occupied their estates were absentee landlords, 
there was no system of organized charity. Yorke is finally 
driven to declare : 

The Revolution, which was brought about ostensibly for the 

1 Madelin, La Revolution, pp. 443, 444. 
2 France in 1802, p. 28. 



50 WORLD REVOLUTION 

benefit of the lower classes of society, has sunk them to a degree 
of degradation and misfortune to which they never were reduced 
under the ancient monarchy. They have been disinherited, 
stripped, and deprived of every resource for existence, except 
defeats of arms and the fleeting spoil of vanquished nations. 

In another passage Yorke asks the inevitable question 
that arises in the minds of all thinking contemporaries : 

France still bleeds at every pore — she is a vast mourning 
family, clad in sackcloth. It is impossible at this time for a 
contemplative mind to be gay in France. At every footstep the 
merciless and sanguinary route of fanatical barbarians disgust 
the sight and sicken humanity — on all sides ruins obtrude them- 
selves on the eye and compel the question, " For what and for 
whom are all this havoc and desolation? " 1 

It will of course be said that Redhead Yorke was a 
" reactionary. " As a matter of fact he was a constitutional 
revolutionary and had served a term of imprisonment in 
Dorchester Castle from 1795 to 1799 for having declared 
himself to be "a man who had been concerned in three 
revolutions already, who essentially contributed to serve 
the Republic in America, who contributed to that of 
Holland, who materially assisted that of France, and who 
will continue to cause revolutions all over the world." His 
visit to France in 1802, however, dispelled his illusions, 
and he had the courage to admit his change of views. His 
letters were not published till after his death. 

Advocates of social revolution, to whom the revelations 
on the real facts of the Terror which have recently been 
published are extremely disconcerting, have adopted the 
convenient line of describing the first French Revolution 
as a " bourgeois movement." It is true that it was made by 
bourgeois, and at the beginning also by aristocrats — and 
that the people throughout were the chief sufferers; but 
this has been the case in every outbreak of the World 
Revolution. All revolutionary leaders or writers have 
been bourgeois, from Weishaupt to Lenin. Marx was a 
bourgeois, Sorel was a bourgeois likewise. No man of the 
people has ever taken a prominent part in the movement. 
But in the French " Terror," as in Russia to-day, the 
bourgeoisie were also the victims. 

1 France in 1802, p. 33. 



THE FIRST FRENCH REVOLUTION 51 

" In that sort of epilepsy into which France had fallen," 
wrote Prudhomme, " not only the revolutionary nobles set them- 
selves by preference against nobles, priests against priests, 
merchants against merchants, rich against rich, but even the 
sans-culottes once they themselves became judges did not any 
the more spare the sans-culottes who had remained amongst the 
crowd of citizens. How could the people have suspected the 
system of universal depopulation? Until then it had not been 
heard of in history. This great doctrine, however, was not 
chimerical, it existed, it was visible, the leaders of opinion only 
wished to reign over deserts." l 

What power can have inspired this fearful system? 
The pages of accepted history provide no clue to the prob- 
lem. Only by a recognition of the secret forces at work 
beneath the surface is it possible to understand how the 
French nation fell a victim to the hideous regime of the 
Terror. In the opinion of numberless enlightened con- 
temporaries Illuminism alone explains the mystery. As 
early as 1793 the Journal de Vienne pointed out the true 
source of inspiration beneath the system of the Jacobins : 

It is not the French who conceived the great project of 
changing the face of the world; this honour belongs to the 
Germans. The French can claim the honour of having begun its 
execution, and of having followed it out to its ultimate conse- 
quences, which, as history is there to prove, were in accordance 
with the genius of this people — the guillotine, intrigue, assas- 
sination, incendiarism, and cannibalism. . . . Whence comes the 
eternal Jacobin refrain of universal liberty and equality, of the 
suppression of kings and princes who are merely tyrants, of 
oppression by the clergy, of- necessary measures for annihilating 
the Christian religion and establishing a philosophic religion — a 
refrain that reminds every one of the declarations of Mauvillon, 
a notable Illuminatus, touching Christianity, of those of Knigge 
and Campe touching State religion? Whence comes it that all 
this harmonizes with the " Original Writings " of the Illuminati 
if there is no alliance" between the two sects ? Whence comes it 
that Jacobinism has partisans everywhere, even in the most 
distant countries, and how can we explain that these, as far as 
researches can extend, have been in touch with Illuminism? 

Aloys Hoffman, editor of this Journal, wrote: " I shall 
never cease to repeat that the Revolution has come from 
masonry and that it was made by writers and the Illu- 
minati." 

1 Prudhomme, Crimes de la Revolution, i. p. xxiii. 



52 WORLD REVOLUTION 

That the objects of the conspiracy were precisely the 
same as they are to-day is shown by this remarkable 
extract from a letter of Quintin Crawfurd to Lord Auck- 
land on May 23, 1793: 

The present crisis is certainly the most extraordinary in its 
nature, and may be the most important in its consequences of 
any that is to be found on the page of history. It may decide 
the fate of the Religion and Government of most of the nations 
of Europe, or rather it may decide whether religion and govern- 
ment are to exist, or Europe be plunged again into a state of 
barbarism. Hitherto the basis of human polity was religion, the 
Supreme Being was everywhere adored, and the great maxims of 
morality respected; but when the order of civil society had 
attained a degree of perfection unknown in former ages, we see 
endeavours almost everywhere put in practice to destroy it, 
Atheism rising against Religion, Anarchy against government, 
vagabonds against the industrious, men who have nothing to 
lose against those who enjoy what they received from their 
ancestors or acquired by their labour, and this conflict brought 
at last into the field to be decided by the sword. On one hand 
we see the chief powers of Europe taking arms in defence of 
Religion and lawful authority, and on the other a multitude of 
disorganized barbarians endeavouring to undo them. Such, my 
Lord, with some political shades that might be added is a pretty 
faithful picture of what the French Revolution has produced 
hitherto. 



What words could better describe the situation of 
Europe in this year of 1921 ? 

But in spite of the vast demolition effected by the 
Terror, neither the disciples of Weishaupt nor their tools 
the revolutionary Socialists had achieved their purpose. 
One more effort must be made to bring about the " Uni- 
versal revolution that should deal the deathblow to 
society." This attempt was made two years after the 
Terror ended by the Communist, Gracchus Babeuf. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUP 

Gracchus Babeuf — The Panth^onistes — Manifesto of the Equals — 
System of Babeuf — Plan of the Conspirators — The Great Day of 
the People — Discovery of the Plot — Execution of Babouvistes — 
Illuminism in England — Ireland — The United Irishmen — Bantry 
Bay — Illuminism in America. 

Francois Noel Babeuf was born in 1762, and at, the 
beginning of the Reign of Terror occupied the post of com- 
missary in the Supply Department of the Commune, where 
he incurred the displeasure of the Comite de Salut Public 
by publishing a placard accusing the Committee of a plan 
to drive the people to revolt by means of a fictitious famine 
and so provide a pretext for killing them off. 1 For this 
offence Babeuf and his colleagues in the same department 
were thrown into prison at the Abbaye, but Babeuf, being 
apparently regarded as mentally irresponsible, was soon 
afterwards released, and once more proceeded to attack 
the party in power, which was no other than that of Robes- 
pierre, Couthon, and Saint- Just. This is the more remark- 
able since the political opinions of Babeuf were entirely 
in accord with those of the Triumvirate ; for Robespierre's 
" Declaration of the Rights of Man " Babeuf entertained 
the warmest admiration. But where, at this point in his 
career, Babeuf joined issue with Robespierre was in the 
method by which this ideal system should be brought 
about ; for the plan of reducing the population of France by 
some fifteen millions in order to be able to provide bread 
and work for the remainder, which Babeuf later described 
as " the immense secret " of the Terror, seemed to him too 
drastic, and in his pamphlet Sur la depopulation de la 

1 Babeuf et le socialisme en 1796, by Edouard Fleury, p. 20. 
53 



54 WORLD REVOLUTION 

France he denounced the noyades, fusillades, and guillo- 
tinades that had decimated the provinces — methods 
which he held should not have been adopted until pacific 
measures for winning the peasants over to Republicanism 
had at least been attempted. 

But the regime that followed on the fall of Robespierre 
led Babeuf to readjust his views, for the Thermidoriens, 
with whom he had thrown in his lot, showed themselves 
to be Opportunists of the most flagrant description, and it 
was thus that after the Directory had been in power a few 
months Babeuf insulted Tallien and Freron, 1 declared that 
the 9th of Thermidor had been an unmitigated disaster, 
and that the only hope for the people now lay in carrying 
out the unfinished plan of Robespierre for " the common 
happiness." Robespierre, he held, was the one " pure " 
revolutionary of his day ; 2 all the rest — the Girondins, who 
had only wished to dethrone the King in order to usurp 
power and riches, the Orleanistes, led by Philippe Egalite 
and Danton, a faction " composed of men as monstrous 
as their chief . . . avid and prodigal of gold . . . auda- 
cious, liars, intriguers " 3 — had exploited the people for 
their own advantage; " Robespierre and his companions 
in martyrdom " alone had aspired to " the equal distribu- 
tion of work and pleasure " 4 which was the ideal of Babeuf. 
Accordingly, he now appealed to the people to rise against 
the Directory and maintain the Constitution of 1793 
founded on Robespierre's " Declaration of the Rights of 
Man." 

The publication of this call to insurrection led to the 
arrest of its author, and Babeuf was again thrown into 
prison, first at Plessis, then at Arras ; but while in captivity 
he encountered a number of kindred spirits, with whose 
co-operation he was able to mature his plan for a further 
revolution — a social revolution for " the common happi- 
ness and true equality " (le bonheur common et VegaliU 
reelle). 6 

1 Fleury, op. cit. p. 37. 

2 Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, i. 147. 
« Ibid. i. 98, 106. 

4 Conspiration pour V egalite dite de Babeuf, by Ph. Buonarotti, i. 88. 
* Fleury, op. cit. p. 45. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 55 

M. Louis Blanc is no doubt right in pronouncing Babeuf 
to have been an Illuminatus, a disciple of Weishaupt, and 
it was thus in accordance with the custom of the sect that 
he had adopted a classical pseudonym, renouncing his 
Christian names of Francois Noel in favour of Gracchus, 1 
just as Weishaupt had assumed the name of Spartacus, the 
Illuminatus Jean Baptiste Clootz had elected to be known 
as Anacharsis, and Pierre Gaspard Chaumette as Anax- 
agoras. The plan of campaign devised by Babeuf was there- 
fore modelled directly on the system of Weishaupt, and on 
his release from prison — which was brought about by the 
amnesty of the " Treize Vendemiaire " — he gathered his 
fellow-conspirators around him and formed an association 
on masonic lines by which propaganda was to be carried 
on in public places, the confederates recognizing each other 
by secret signs and passwords. 2 At the first meeting of 
the Babouvistes — amongst whom were found Darthe, 
Germain, Bodson, and Buonarotti — all swore to " remain 
united and to make equality triumph," and the project 
was then discussed of establishing a large popular society 
for the inculcation of Babeuf s doctrines. In order to 
escape the vigilance of the police it was decided to assemble 
henceforth in a small room in the garden of the Abbaye 
de Sainte Genevieve lent by one of the members who had 
rented part of the building ; later the society moved to the 
refectory of the Abbey, or, on nights when this hall was 
required for other purposes, meetings were held in the 
crypt, where, seated on the ground, by the light of torches, 
the conspirators discussed the great plan for overthrowing 
society. The proximity of this building to the Pantheon 
led to their being known under the name of the PantMo- 
nistes. 3 

Unfortunately the confusion of mind prevailing 
amongst the advocates of " Equality " was so great that 
the meetings — which before long consisted of two thou- 
sand people — became " like a Tower of Babel." 4 No one 
knew precisely what he wanted and no decisions could be 
reached ; it was therefore decided to supplement these huge 

1 Fleury, op. cit. p. 38. 2 Ibid. p. 69. 

• Ibid. pp. 69, 70. « Ibid. p. 71. 



56 WORLD REVOLUTION 

assemblies by small secret committees, the first of which 
held its sittings at the house of Amar — one of the most 
ferocious members of the Comite de Surete Generale 
during the Terror — and here the scheme of social revolu- 
tion was elaborated. Starting from the premise that all 
property is theft, it was decided that the process known in 
revolutionary language as " expropriation " 1 must take 
place; that is to say, all property must be wrested from its 
present owners by force — the force of an armed mob. 
But Babeuf , whilst advocating violence and tumult as the 
means to an end, in no way desired anarchy as a permanent 
condition; the State must be maintained, and not only 
maintained but made absolute, the sole dispenser of the 
necessities of life. 2 " In my system of Common Happi- 
ness," he wrote, " I desire that no individual property shall 
exist. The land is God's and its fruits belong to all men in 
general." 3 Another Babouviste, the Marquis d'Antonelle, 
formerly a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, had 
expressed the matter in much the same words: " The State 
of Communism is the only just, the only good one ; without 
this state of things no peaceful and really happy societies 
can exist." 4 

But Babeuf 's activities had again aroused the attention 
of the Directory, and during the winter of 1795-6 the 
apostle of Equality was obliged to retire into hiding. 
Nevertheless from his retreat Babeuf still contrived, with 
the aid of his twelve-year-old son Emile, to edit his papers 
Le Tribun du Peuple and Le Cri du Peuple, and to direct 
the movement. At one of the meetings of the Pantheon- 
istes, however, Darthe incautiously read the last number 
of Le Tribun du Peuple aloud, and this time no less a per- 
sonage than General Bonaparte himself descended on the 
" den of brigands," 5 as it was known to the police, and, 
after ordering it to be closed down before his eyes, went off 
with the key of the building in his pocket. 

1 This word was first coined by Thouret, a member of the National 
Assembly, in a debate on the goods of the clergy in 1790. 

2 Fleury, op. cit. p. 111. 
» Ibid. p. 173. 

4 Antonelle in the Orateur Plebeien, No. 9. See P*%is saisies chez 
Babeuf, ii. 11. 

6 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 107. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 57 

Babeuf then decided that a " Secret Directorate " must 
be formed, 1 of which the workings bear a curious resem- 
blance to those of the Illuminati. Thus Weishaupt had 
employed twelve leading adepts to direct operations 
throughout Germany, and had strictly enjoined his fol- 
lowers not to be known even to each other as Illuminati; 
so Babeuf now instituted twelve principal agents to work 
the different districts of Paris, and these men were not 
even to know the names of those who formed the central 
committee of four, but only to communicate with them 
through intermediaries partially initiated into the secrets 
of the conspiracy. Like Weishaupt also Babeuf adopted a 
domineering and arrogant tone towards his subordinates, 
and any whom he suspected of treachery were threatened, 
after the manner of the secret societies, with the direst 
vengeance. " Woe to those of whom we have cause to 
complain! " he wrote to one whose zeal he had begun to 
doubt ; ' ' reflect that true conspirators can never relinquish 
those they have once decided to employ." 2 

By April 1796 the plan of insurrection was complete, 
and the famous Manifesto of the Equals drawn up ready for 
publication. 

" People of France," this proclamation announced, " for 
fifteen centuries you have lived in slavery and consequently in 
unhappiness. For six years (i.e. during the course of the Revo- 
lution) you have hardly drawn breath, waiting for independence, 
for happiness, and equality. Equality! the first desire of Nature, 
the first need of Man and the principal bond of all legal asso- 
ciation! . . . 

" Well! We intend henceforth to live and die equal as we 
were born; we wish for real equality or death, that is what we 
must have. And we will have this real equality, no matter at 
what price. Woe to those who interpose themselves between it 
and us! . . . 

" The French Revolution is only the forerunner of another 
revolution, very much greater, very much more solemn, which 
will be the last! . . . What must we have more than equality 
of rights? We must have not only that equality transcribed in 
the ' Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,' we 
must have it in our midst, on the roofs of our houses. We will 

1 Buonarotti i. 114, 115. 

* Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, ii. 163. 



58 WORLD REVOLUTION 

consent to anything for that, to make a clean sweep so as to hold 
to that only. Perish if necessary all the arts provided that real 
equality is left to us! . . . 

11 The agrarian law and the division of lands were the momen- 
tary wish of a few soldiers without principle moved by instinct 
rather than by reason. We tend to something more sublime 
and equitable, the Common Happiness or the Community of 
Goods. No more private property in land, the land belongs to 
no one. We claim, we wish for the communal enjoyment of 
the fruits of the earth: the fruits of the earth belong to every 
one. 

" We declare that we can no longer endure that the great 
majority of men should work and sweat in the service and for 
the good pleasure of an extreme minority. Long enough and 
too long have less than a million individuals disposed of what 
belongs to more than twenty millions of their fellowmen, of 
their equals. Let it cease at last, this great scandal in which our 
nephews will not be able to believe. Vanish at last, revolting 
distinctions of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and 
servants, of governors and governed. Let there be no other 
difference between men than that of age and sex. Since all have 
the same needs and the same faculties, let there be only one 
education, one kind of food. They content themselves with one 
sun and air for all; why should not the same portion and the 
same quality of food suffice for each of them? . . . 

" People of France, we say to you: the holy enterprise that 
we are organizing has no other object but to put an end to civil 
dissensions and to public misery. Never has a more vast design 
been conceived and executed. From time to time a few men of 
genius, a few sages have spoken in a low and trembling voice. 
Not one of them has had the courage to tell the whole truth. 
The moment for great measures has arrived. The evil is at 
its height; it covers the face of the earth. Chaos under the 
name of politics has reigned for too many centuries. . . . The 
moment has come to found the Republic of the Equals, the 
great hostel open to all men. . . . Groaning families, come and 
seat yourselves at the common table set up by Nature for all 
her children. ... 

" People of France, Open your eyes and heart to the 
plenitude of happiness; recognize and proclaim with us the 
Republic of the Equals." l 

This document was destined, however, not to be dis- 
played to the eyes of the public, for the Secret Committee 
finally decided that it would be inexpedient to admit the 
people into the whole plan of the conspiracy ; particularly 

1 Buonarotti, op. cit. ii. 130-134. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 59 

did they judge it inadvisable to publish the phrase which 
had been expressed in almost identical language by 
Weishaupt: " Perish all the arts, provided that real equal- 
ity is left to us! " The people of France were not to know 
that a return to barbarism was contemplated. Accordingly 
a second proclamation was framed under the title of 
" Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf " — a far less 
inspiring appeal than the former Manifesto, and mainly 
unintelligible to the working-classes, yet, as M. Fleury 
remarks, " the veritable Bible or Koran of the despotic 
system known as Communism." 1 For herein lies the crux 
of the matter. No one reading these two documents of the 
Babouvistes can fail to recognize the truth of certain of 
their strictures on society — the glaring disparity between 
poverty and riches, the uneven distribution of work and 
pleasure, the injustice of an industrial system whereby, 
owing largely at this period to the suppression of trade 
unions by the revolutionary leaders, employers could live 
in luxury by sweated labour — but the point is : how did 
Babeuf propose to redress these evils? Briefly, then, his 
system, founded on the doctrine " Community of goods 
and of labour," 2 may be summarized as follows: 

Every one must be forced to work so many hours a day 
in return for equal remuneration; the man who showed 
himself more skilful or industrious than his fellows would 
be recompensed merely by " public gratitude." 3 This 
compulsory labour was in fact not to be paid for in money 
but in kind, for, since the right to private property con- 
stituted the principal evil of existing society, the distinc- 
tion of " mine " and " thine " must be abolished 4 and no 
one should be allowed to possess anything of his own. Pay- 
ment could therefore only be made in the products of 
labour, which were all to be collected in huge communal 
stores and doled out in equal rations to the workers. 5 
Inevitably commerce would be entirely done away with, 
and money was no longer to be coined or admitted to the 

1 Babeuf et le socialisme en 1796, by Edouard, Fleury. 
8 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 87. 

• Analyse de la doctrine de Babeuf, Buonarotti, op. cit. ii. 146. 
4 Ibid. ii. 145. 

• Ibid. i. 213. 



60 WORLD REVOLUTION 

country ; foreign trade must therefore be carried on by coin 
now in circulation, and when that was exhausted, by a 
system of barter. 1 

Only work of essential utility was to be undertaken, 
and in order to ensure the requisite number of hands for 
each industry boys were no longer to be allowed to choose 
their professions but must be trained for whatever work 
was most urgently needed. The workers would then be 
drafted off in gangs to perform the labour assigned them 
" according to the needs of the nation and the supreme 
principle of equality." 

Since in France agriculture was of the first importance, 
the greater number of inhabitants, both boys and girls, 
would be sent out to till the soil ; 2 and it was hoped that by 
degrees Paris and all the large towns of France would dis- 
appear, for it was in towns that wage-slavery flourished 
and that " big capitalists " were able to surround them- 
selves with luxury and display. 3 The hosts of parasites 
who had hitherto contributed to their enjoyment — 
shopkeepers, domestic servants, poets, painters, actors, 
dancers — would all now be obliged to seek a livelihood 
in the fields, and villages consisting of salubrious houses 
" remarkable for their elegant symmetry " would spring 
up all over France. 4 

The better to ensure a hardy race of toilers, children 
were to be given over to the State at birth and trained in 
institutions. 

" In the social order conceived by the Committee," wrote 
Buonarotti, " the country seizes upon the individual at birth 
(s'empare de Vindividu naissant) in order only to relinquish it at 
death. It watches over his first moments, assures him the milk 
and the care of her who gave him birth, keeps him from all that 
would injure his health or weaken his body, preserves him from 
false tenderness and conducts him by the hand of his mother to 
the national house where he will acquire virtue and the enlight- 
enment necessary to a true citizen." 5 

1 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 238, 271, ii. 318. 2 Ibid. i. 208-211. 

3 Ibid. i. 221. Note here the theory of " wage-slavery " again formu- 
lated: " From the perpetual exchange of services and salaries there arises 
on one side the habit of authority and of commanding, and on the other 
that of submission and servitude " (p. 222). 

4 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 221-224. 

6 Ibid. i. 282. " Plus d 'education domestique, plus de puissance 
paternelle " {ibid. i. 288). 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 61 

In order to replace family affection by civic virtue in 
the mind of the child, it was further proposed to forbid 
him to bear the name of his father unless he were a man 
who had distinguished himself by great virtues. 1 

His education was to be of course only of the most 
primitive kind: reading, writing, enough arithmetic to 
enable him to work in a Government office if required; 
history — but only that relating to the evils ended by the 
Republic and the blessings of which it was a source — and 
such knowledge of law, geography, and natural history as 
would give him an idea of the wisdom of the institutions 
under which he lived. In order to embellish the fetes 
arranged by the Government he should also be versed in 
music and dancing. 2 

Beyond this all avenues of knowledge were to be closed 
to him, for it was feared that " men might devote them- 
selves to sciences," and thereby grow vain and averse from 
manual labour. 3 Had not Weishaupt declared the sciences 
to be " the complicated needs of a state contrary to Nature, 
the inventions of vain and empty brains "? 

Such, then, was the scheme of Babeuf 4 for the libera- 
tion of the French people, and it is difficult to see wherein 
it differed from the serfdom under which their forefathers 
had groaned during the Middle Ages. There is in fact 
nothing to be said for Communism that does not equally 
apply to serfdom; in both the means of subsistence are 
assured, the spectre of unemployment is dispelled, in both 
the taskmaster may be kind or cruel, and in neither can 
the worker call his body or his soul his own. Was not then 
Babeuf 's remedy worse than the disease? Were not even 
11 the revolting distinctions of rich and poor " preferable to 
a dead level of slavery from which the one inspiring emo- 
tion of human life — hope — would be for ever removed ? 

It is at any rate impossible to imagine a system more 
distasteful to the French character than the labour colony 
thus devised by Babeuf. That the people of France, of all 
people the most acquisitive and the most retentive of their 

1 Buonarotti, op. tit. p. 219. J Ibid. i. 286-287. 

3 Ibid. i. 293. 

4 See summing up of system by Babeuf himself {ibid. ii. 220) in which 
he describes it as a " plan enchanteur." 



62 WORLD REVOLUTION 

possessions — the natural consequence of their inherent 
thrift and industry — should be willing to renounce 
the right to possess anything; that the pleasure-loving 
Parisians, to whom amidst all their privations the gay whirl 
of streets and spectacles was as the breath of life, should 
submit to be driven forth to seek a living on the desolate 
plains of the provinces, with no amusements to vary the 
monotony but the fetes provided by the Republic — at 
which they were not to be allowed to wear festive attire, 
but to attend in their working clothes x for fear of violating 
the principle of absolute equality; that the nation dis- 
tinguished for its poets and painters, its savants and beaux- 
esprits, should consent to become a race of unpaid manual 
labourers; above all, that a people who for six years had 
thrilled to the cry of " Liberty! " should now meekly place 
its neck under a yoke far more oppressive than that from 
which it had been relieved, would be grotesque if it were 
not so tragic. 

But when one realises the misery of the people at this 
crisis and the countless disillusionments through which 
they had passed, one can feel nothing but burning indig- 
nation at the charlatans who thus set out to exploit their 
sufferings. For if these men had dealt honestly with the 
people, laying before them the real plan they had framed 
for their relief, the people would only have had themselves 
to blame if the conspirators had succeeded in carrying out 
their design. 

But the people were not in the secret of the movement. 
Just as in the great outbreaks of the Revolution the mob of 
Paris had been driven blindly forward on false pretexts 
supplied by the agitators, so once again the people were 
to be made the instruments of their own ruin. The 
" Secret Committee of Direction " well knew that Com- 
munism was a system that would never appeal to the 
people; they were careful, therefore, not to admit their 
dupes among the working-classes into the whole of their 
programme, and believing that it was only by an appeal to 
self-interest and covetousness they could secure a following, 2 

1 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 225. 

2 Ibid. i. 97: "It was impossible to inspire the people with enerev 
without talking to them of their interests and their rights." 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 63 

they skillfuly played on the people's passions, promis- 
ing them booty they had no intention of bestowing 
on them. Thus in the " Insurrectional Act " now drawn 
up by the Committee it was announced that " the goods 
of the emigres, of the conspirators (i.e. the Royalists), and 
of the enemies of the people were to be distributed to the 
defenders of the country and the needy"; 1 they did not 
tell them that in reality these things were to belong to no 
one, but to become the property of the State administered 
by themselves. Buonarotti in his naive account of these 
manoeuvres justifies the deception by observing that " the 
great point was to succeed," and so the Secret Directory 
judged it advisable to " fix the attention and sustain the 
hopes of the working-classes " by the promise to divide 
every thing up amongst them. 2 The people then were not 
to be allowed to know the truth about the cause in which 
they were asked to shed their blood — and that they 
would be obliged to shed it in torrents no sane man could 
doubt. 

It is here perhaps that Babeuf lays himself most open 
to the charge of mental irresponsibility. At one moment 
we find him declaring that the process can be carried out 
by perfectly pacific methods, at the next inciting the 
populace to violence of the most fearful kind. Thus when 
d'Antonelle suggested that, however urgent it might be to 
establish absolute equality, this ideal condition could only 
be brought about " by brigandage and the horrors of civil 
war, which would be a dreadful method," 3 Babeuf indig- 
nantly replied: " What do you mean by saying that one 
could only achieve real equality by brigandage? Is it 
really Antonelle who defines brigandage after the manner 
of the patriciate? Any movement, any proceeding that 
would bring about, if only partially, the disgorging of those 
who have too much for the profit of those who have not 
enough would not, it seems to me, be brigandage, it would 
be the beginning of a return to justice and real order." 4 
As to d'Antonelle's further contention that in the confusion 
following on general pillage it would be impossible to carry 

■ Buonarotti, op. cit. ii. 252. * Ibid. i. 155, 156. 

* Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, ii. 16. * Ibid. 



64 WORLD REVOLUTION 

out any scheme of redistribution, Babeuf was equally 
incredulous. " What will they do after the upheaval, you 
will say ; will they be capable of erecting the august temple 
of Equality? " Babeuf anticipated no difficulty here ; they 
had only to read Diderot to discover how easy it would be 
to provide for the needs of a multitude of citizens; " all 
that is only a simple affair of numbering things and people, 
a simple operation of calculation and combinations and 
consequently susceptible of a very fine degree of order." 1 
But when it came to organizing the required insurrec- 
tion Babeuf adopted a very different kind of language. In 
fact the former denouncer of Robespierre's " system of 
depopulation " now asserted that not only Robespierre's 
aims but his methods were to be commended. 

I confess to-day that I bear a grudge against myself for having 
formerly seen the revolutionary government and Robespierre 
and Saint- Just in such black colours. I think these men alone 
were worth all the revolutionaries put together, and that their 
dictatorial government was devilishly well thought out. . . . 
I do not at all agree . . . that they committed great crimes and 
made many Republicans perish. Not so many, I think. . . . 2 
The salvation of twenty-five millions of men must not be weighed 
against consideration for a few equivocal individuals. A regen- 
erator must take a wide outlook. He must mow down every- 
thing that thwarts him, everything that obstructs his passage, 
everything that can impede his prompt arrival at the goal on 
which he has determined. Rascals or imbeciles, or presumptuous 
people or those eager for glory, it is all the same, tant pis pour 
eux — what are they there for? Robespierre knew all that, and 
it is partly what makes me admire him. 3 

But where Babeuf showed himself the intellectual 
inferior of Robespierre was in the way he proposed to 
overcome resistance to his plan of a Socialist State. 
Robespierre, as he well knew, had spent fourteen months 
"mowing down those that obstructed his passage," had 
kept the guillotine unremittingly at work in Paris and the 
provinces, yet even then had not succeeded in silencing 
objectors. But Babeuf hoped to accomplish his purpose 

1 Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, ii. 23. 

2 It should be noted that in his pamphlet on Le Systeme de la depopula- 
tion Babeuf had estimated the victims of the Terror at no less than a 
million. 

3 Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, ii. 52. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 65 

in one day — that "great day of the people" l wherein all 
opposition should be instantly suppressed, the whole exist- 
ing social order annihilated, and the Republic of Equality 
erected on its ruins. If, however, the process were to be 
brief it must necessarily be all the more violent, and it was 
thus with none of the calm precision of Robespierre mark- 
ing down heads for destruction that Babeuf set about his 
task. When writing out his plans of insurrection, his secre- 
tary Pille afterwards related at his trial, Babeuf would rush 
up and down the room with naming eyes, mouthing and 
grimacing, hitting himself against the furniture, knocking 
over the chairs whilst uttering hoarse cries of "To arms! 
to arms! The insurrection! the insurrection is beginning! " 
— it was an insurrection against the chairs, said Pille drily. 
Then Babeuf would fling himself upon his pen, plunge it 
into the ink, and write with fearful rapidity, whilst his 
whole body trembled and the perspiration poured from his 
brow. " It was no longer madness," added Pille, " it was 
frenzy! " 2 This frenzy, Babeuf explained, was necessary 
in order to work himself up to the required degree of elo- 
quence, and in his appeals to insurrection it is difficult to see 
where his programme differed from the brigandage and 
violence he had deprecated in his reply to d'Antonelle. 

" Why," he wrote in Le Tribun du Peuple, " does one speak 
of laws and property ? Property is the share of usurpers and laws 
are the work of the strongest. The sun shines for every one, 
and the earth belongs to no one. Go then, my friends, and 
disturb, overthrow, and upset this society which does not suit 
you. Take everywhere all that you like. Superfluity belongs 
by right to him who has nothing. This is not all, friends and 
brothers. If constitutional barriers are opposed to your generous 
efforts, overthrow without scruple barriers and constitutions. 
Butcher without mercy tyrants, patricians, the Gilded Million, 
all those immoral beings who would oppose your common happi- 
ness. You are the People, the true People, the only People 
worthy to enjoy the good things of this world! The justice of 
the People is great and majestic as the People itself; all that it 
does is legitimate, all that it orders is sacred! " 3 

Inevitably Babeuf secured a certain following amongst 
the working-classes — the call to violence must ever find 

1 Pieces saisies chez Babeuf, ii. 21. 
* Fleury, op. cit. p. 244. 3 Ibid. p. 77. 



66 WORLD REVOLUTION 

an answering echo in the minds of the despairing, and the 
people of Paris at this crisis had good cause for despair. 
Food — owing to four years of war and seven of revolution 
— was at famine prices, the destruction of commerce car- 
ried on by the emissaries of the Comite de Salut Public in 
the manufacturing towns of France had raised all the com- 
modities of life to the same prohibitive level and created 
vast unemployment ; meanwhile the newly rich — the war 
profiteers, the army contractors, the adventurers who had 
made their fortunes out of the Revolution — revelled in 
luxury, their wives and mistresses swathed in pearls and 
diamonds, and little else besides, flaunted their charms 
and opulence before the hungry eyes of the poor. What 
wonder, then, that the soldiers cried out their " rulers were 
all rascals, all murderers of the people, that they were 
ready to exterminate them," or that the wretched inhabit- 
ants of the faubourgs declared all their ills " were to be 
attributed to the Revolution and that they were happier 
under the Old Regime " ? 1 

To a people in such a mood as this it was easy to make 
the counsel of despair which consisted in smashing every- 
thing appear to be the simplest solution of all difficulties, 
and the agents of Babeuf , versed in all the methods of the 
Secret Societies for stirring up popular fury, succeeded in 
winning over a number of working-men to their views. 
One ingenious plan consisted in pasting up large incendiary 
placards around which accomplices known as groupeurs — 
or, as we might say, " crowd-collectors " — were employed 
to assemble as if by accident, and then to read the words 
aloud, pointing out the most important passages with their 
fingers. 2 The Analyse de Babeuf thus exposed met with 
much applause from the working-men, who could but 
dimly understand its real purport. At the same time 
inflammatory pamphlets dilating on the greed of the 
tradesmen and the infamies of the Government were cir- 
culated in the faubourgs, where the women of the people 
eagerly read them aloud to their men-folk whilst at work. 
So great was the enthusiasm thus created that the Babou- 

1 Pieces saisies, ii. 164. 
* Fleury, op. cit. pp. 74, 131; Pieces saisies, ii. 106. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 67 

vistes entertained no doubt of being able to enlist the whole 
proletariat in the movement, and by the beginning of May 
it was estimated that an army of no less than 17,000 people 
would assemble on the day of insurrection. 1 These forces 
included 4500 soldiers and 6000 of the police, who by lavish 
promises of booty had been won over to the conspiracy. 

The following programme for the " Great Day " was 
now drawn up by the Secret Directory : at a given moment 
the revolutionary army was to march on the Legislative 
Assembly, on the headquarters of the Army, and on the 
houses of the Ministers. The best-trained troops were to 
be sent to the arsenals and the munition factories, and also 
to the camps of Vincennes and Grenelle in the hope that 
the 8000 men encamped there would join in the movement. 
Meanwhile orators were to hold forth to the soldiers, and 
women were to present them with refreshment and civic 
wreaths. In the event of their remaining proof against 
these seductions the streets were to be barricaded, and 
stones, bricks, boiling water, and vitriol thrown down on 
the heads of the troops. 2 All supplies for the capital were 
then to be seized and placed under the control of the 
leaders ; at the same time the wealthier classes were to be 
driven from their houses, which were immediately to be 
converted into lodgings for the poor. 3 The members of the 
Directory were then to be butchered, likewise all citizens 
who offered any resistance to the insurgents. 4 The insur- 
rection thus " happily terminated," as Babeuf naively 
expressed it, 5 the whole people were to be assembled in the 
Place de la Revolution 6 and invited to co-operate in the 
choice of their representatives. " The plan," writes 
Buonarotti, " was to talk to the people without reserve and 
without digressions, and to render the most impressive 
homage to its sovereignty." 7 But lest the people per- 
chance, blinded to its truest interests, might fail to recog- 
nize its saviours in the person of the conspirators, the 
Babouvistes proposed to follow up their homage of the 
people's sovereignty by demanding that " executive power 
should be exclusively confided to themselves"; for, as 

1 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 189. 2 Ibid. i. 194. 

» Ibid. i. 196. * Ibid. 

• Ibid. i. 197. • Ibid. i. 156. T Ibid. i. 200. 



68 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Buonarotti observed, " at the beginning of the revolution 
it is necessary, even out of respect for the real sovereignty 
of the people, to occupy oneself less with the wishes of the 
nation than to place supreme authority in strongly revolu- 
tionary hands." 1 Once in these hands it would of course 
remain there, and the Babouvistes with all the civil and 
military forces at their back would be able to impose their 
system of State serfdom on the submissive people. 

It is fearful to imagine what blood might once again 
have reddened the streets of Paris if an unforeseen obstacle 
had not arisen in the path of the conspirators — namely, a 
traitor in the camp. This man, called Grisel, was a soldier 
in the 33rd Brigade who had been drawn against his will 
into the conspiracy. Strolling one April evening on the 
Quai des Tuileries, Grisel had encountered an old friend, a 
tailor named Mugnier, who was an enthusiastic Babouviste. 
Mugnier, convinced that he would find a sympathizer in 
Grisel, proceeded to pour forth complaints against the 
Government, and ended by introducing him to several of 
his fellow-conspirators. A few days later one of these men 
met Grisel in a cafe, and becoming loquacious under the 
influence of drink, confided to him part of the plan of the 
conspiracy. Grisel, fearing to make an enemy of so dan- 
gerous a man, dared not express his disapproval, and his 
new associates, encouraged by his apparent agreement with 
their views, invited him to one of their meetings at the cafe 
of the " Bains Chinois," whither they had removed after 
the closing down of the so-called " Pantheon." Here Grisel 
found himself in the thick of the conspiracy; violent 
speeches were made — both by men and women — revo- 
lutionary songs were sung, amongst others a dirge on the 
death of Robespierre. Meanwhile wine and cider flowed 
freely, and Grisel, invited to take part in the " orgy " as he 
afterwards described it, was hailed as an acquisition to the 
cause. One of the conspirators then handed him some of 
Babeuf's pamphlets for distribution amongst the soldiers 
and asked him to compose others for the same purpose. 
Grisel realized that it was too late to draw back, for the 
conspirators, having taken him into their confidence, 

1 Buonarotti, op. cit. i. 134. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 69 

would certainly dispose of him by a dagger-thrust if he now 
disassociated himself from their designs. Accordingly he 
set himself to the task assigned him, but not without first 
consulting his battalion-commander, who advised him to 
continue in his r61e of Babouviste. Grisel, warming to the 
work, thereupon composed a violent letter entitled Franc- 
Libre a son ami La Terreur, inciting the troops to rebellion, 
and in which he was careful to imitate the pompous and 
meaningless phraseology of the conspirators. This effusion 
met with the heartiest applause at the " Bains Chinois," 
and Grisel, who had hitherto been only partly initiated into 
the details of the insurrection, now found himself received 
into the inner councils of the leaders. At the first of these 
meetings, consisting only of five members — Babeuf , 
Germain, Buonarotti, Didier, and Darthe — Grisel saw 
the leader of the conspiracy for the first time, and looking 
at him with some curiosity noticed with surprise that 
Babeuf, of whose genius he had heard so much, presented 
an appearance of " extreme mediocrity," whilst his 
behaviour showed him to be more eccentric than original. 
In fact the whole band seemed to the newcomer a party of 
maniacs, and his first feeling was one of remorse at the idea 
of giving over the victims of mere mental disorder to 
justice. When, therefore, Babeuf unfolded his scheme of 
insurrection, entailing the wholesale massacre of the 
Government, the wealthy, and all existing authorities, 
Grisel, overcome with horror, ventured to expostulate, 
pointing out the terrible consequences of overthrowing the 
Government: " What will you put in its place? . . . Will 
there not be an interval between the fall of the Govern- 
ment . . . and that which you will put in its place? It 
will be complete anarchy ; all the restraints of law will be 
broken. I pray you think it over. . . ." * 

This moderation nearly proved fatal to Grisel, and 
seeing the threatening glances directed towards him, he 
hastily repaired his error by plunging into a violent 
harangue in which he proposed to burn down all the 
chateaux around Paris before falling on the members of the 
Directory. The suggestion did not, however, find favour 

1 Fleury, op. cit. pp. 175, 176. 



70 WORLD REVOLUTION 

with the conspirators, who saw in the destruction of the 
chateaux an end to their hopes of booty; nevertheless 
Grisel had now regained their good opinion and was 
admitted to further meetings of the committee. At one of 
these, Darthe read aloud the finished plan of insurrection, 
to which further atrocious details had been added — every 
one attempting to exercise any authority was instantly to 
be put to death, the armourers were to be forced to give 
up their arms, the bakers their supplies of bread, and those 
who resisted hoisted to the nearest lantern ; the same fate 
was reserved for all wine and spirit merchants who might 
refuse to provide the brandy needed to inflame the popu- 
lace and drive them into violence. 1 " All reflection on the 
part of the people must be avoided," ran the written direc- 
tions to the leaders; " they must commit acts which will 
prevent them from going back." 2 

Amongst the whole of this ferocious band, Rossignol, 
the former general of the revolutionary armies in La 
Vend6e, showed himself the most bloodthirsty: " I will not 
have anything to do with your insurrection," he cried, 
" unless heads fall like hail . . . unless it inspires so great 
a terror that it makes the whole universe shudder ..." 
— a discourse that met with unanimous applause. 

The 11th of May had been fixed for the great day of 
explosion, when not only Paris, but all the large cities of 
France worked on by the agents of Babeuf were to rise 
and overthrow the whole structure of civilization. But 
Grisel had sought an interview with Carnot, and the Gov- 
ernment, warned of the impending attack, was ready to 
meet it. On the morning of the day appointed, a placard 
was found posted up on all the walls of Paris bearing these 
words: * 

The Executive Directory to the Citizens op Paris 

Citizens, a frightful plot is to break out this night or 
tomorrow at the dawn of day. A band of thieves and murderers 
has formed the project of butchering the Legislative Assembly, 
all the members of the Government, the staff of the Army, and 
all constituted authorities in Paris. The Constitution of '93 is 
to be proclaimed. This proclamation is to be the signal for a 

1 Fleury, op. cit. pp. 193-195. Ibid. p. 196. ' ' 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 71 

general pillage of Paris, of houses as much as of stores and shops, 
and the massacre of a great number of citizens is to be carried 
out at the same time. But be reassured, good citizens; the 
Government is watching, it knows the leaders of the plot and 
their methods . . . ; be calm, therefore, and carry on your 
ordinary business; the Government has taken infallible meas- 
ures for outwitting their schemes, and for giving them up with 
their partisans to the vengeance of the law. 1 

Then, without further warning, the police burst into 
the house where Babeuf and Buonarotti were drawing up a 
rival placard calling the people to revolt. In the midst of 
their task the arm of the law surprised and seized them, 
and on the following morning forty-five other leaders of the 
conspiracy were arrested likewise and thrown into the 
Abbaye. Alas for the support they had hoped for from the 
populace! The revolutionary army on which they had 
counted, impressed as the people always are by a display of 
authority, went over to the police in support of law and 
order. With the removal of the agitators the whole popu- 
lace came to their senses and realized the full horror of the 
plot into which they had been inveigled. 

" The working-man," a Government reporter writes, " no 
longer regards the conspiracy as a wild story, the pillage prom- 
ised him makes him shrug his shoulders, and he feels that the 
brigands, hailing from no one knows where, would have pillaged 
the working-man himself. Their remark is, ' It would be better 
to stay as we are and to send all those rascals to the scaffold! ' 
When the project of the massacre is read and these words ' all 
reflection on the part of th'e people must be avoided; they must 
commit acts which will prevent them from going back,' the 
readers are overcome with anger. They see that the scoundrels 
wished to make them the victims. ' Let the Directory have them 
all hanged, and may Hell swallow them up ! ' — that is their 
reflection. Some soldiers reading these dreadful documents say 
loudly : ' Soldiers of liberty will never have for friends thieves, 
brigands, and assassins! ' " 2 

The appeals of Babeuf 's friends to the working-classes 
urging them to rescue the prisoners fell therefore on deaf 
ears. In vain hordes of viragos enlisted by the conspirators 
paraded the faubourgs, telling the working-men of Saint - 
Antoine that their comrades in Saint-Marceau were taking 

1 Fleury, op. cit. 216. * Schmidt, Tableaux de Paris, iii. 197. 



72 WORLD REVOLUTION 

up arms, and proclaiming in Saint-Marceau that Saint- 
Antoine was rising; the working-men of both districts 
indignantly repulsed these furies, who admitted with tears 
they had been paid to stir up insurrection. 

On the 27th of August 1796 all the leaders of the con- 
spiracy to the number of forty-seven were removed to 
Vendome to await their trial, which, however, did not 
begin until February 20 of the following year and lasted 
until the end of May. Babeuf's behaviour in court alter- 
nated between brazen defiance and pitiable weakness. 
Already at his cross-examination in Paris he had declared 
himself to be merely the agent of a conspiracy : 

I attest they do me too much honour in decorating me with 
the title of head of this affair. I declare that I had only a 
secondary and limited part in it. . . . The heads and the leaders 
needed a director of public opinion, I was in the position to enlist 
this opinion. . . . l 

Who were the mysterious chiefs referred to by Babeuf ? 
The Illuminati ? The Order, we know, was still active and 
co-operated with the society of the Philadelphes, which, 
according to Lombard de Langres, secretly directed the 
Babouviste conspiracy. Babeuf, whilst thus disclaiming 
responsibility, yet maintained his firm belief in Commun- 
ism though admitting it to be an unattainable ideal. This 
final abandonment of his revolutionary programme, how- 
ever, did not save him, and on the 27th of May 1797 sen- 
tence of death was passed on Babeuf and Darthe ; seven of 
their fellow-conspirators were ordered to be deported, the 
rest acquitted. The two condemned men vainly attempted 
to stab themselves with stilettos they had concealed 
beneath their clothing, but were removed to their cells by 
the police, and on the 28th of May the " Chief of the 
Equals " and his companion perished on the scaffold. 

So ended Babeuf, but not so Babouvisme. Buonarotti 
still survived to hand on the torch of conflagration to the 
revolutionary groups of the early nineteenth century. 

To-day, however, owing to the pretensions of German 
Socialism, Babeuf, even in France, is almost forgotten or 
is remembered only as a madman. But why is Babeuf 

1 Fleury, op. cit. p. 230. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 73 

to be regarded as any madder than his more famous suc- 
cessors in the science of revolution? On the contrary, a 
close study of the Babouviste conspiracy reveals its author 
to have been far ahead of his times, a man who, if he had 
lived to-day, would undoubtedly be hailed as a herald of 
the dawn. 

The fact is that, as students of the Russian Revolution 
will have observed, Babouvisme and Bolshevism are iden- 
tical; between the two creeds there is no essential difference. 
The third Internationale of Moscow in its first Manifesto 
rightly traces its descent from Babeuf. We shall return 
to this point later in connection with the programme of 
the Bolsheviks. 

It may be objected that the Babouviste rising was 
lacking in the International spirit of Bolshevism; it is true 
that Babeuf confined his energies to France in the matter 
of organizing the day of revolution, but that he dreamt of 
the movement subsequently developing on a far larger 
scale is evident from those momentous words of his Com- 
munist Manifesto: " The French Revolution is only the 
forerunner of another revolution, very much greater, very 
much more solemn, and which will be the last! '\ 

The conspiracy of Babeuf was thus the expiring effort 
of the French Revolution to realize the great scheme of 
Weishaupt. The universal nature of that first upheaval 
has been too little realized by posterity. Everywhere 
Illuminism had found its adepts; in Holland, Belgium, 
Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, even as far as 
Africa, the disintegrating doctrines of Weishaupt had 
spread beneath the surface. 1 It was not merely the thrones 
of Europe that were shaken but civilization itself that 
trembled to its very foundations. England had entered 
largely into the projects of the conspirators; no less an 
adept than Cato-Zwack himself had, as we have seen, 
visited this country after his expulsion from Bavaria, and 
spent a year at Oxford University, which, less receptive 
to illuminated doctrines than it is to-day, accorded him 
scant appreciation. 2 But the efforts of his f ellow-country- 

1 Barruel, op. cit. iv. 357-378. 2 Ibid. op. cit. iv. p. 400. 



74 WORLD REVOLUTION 

men, Rontgen, Ibiken, and Regenhardt who followed, 1 met 
with some degree of success, and Robison, himself a Free- 
mason, admits with regret that a certain number of 
British masons were won over by the German propagan- 
dists. Amongst these was the celebrated Thomas Paine, 
who was later on to betray his connection with the Illu- 
minati by his work, The Age of Reason, written in France 
whilst the " Feasts of Reason " were taking place in the 
churches of Paris. Largely, then, owing to the instrument- 
ality of Paine several " illuminized " lodges were started 
in England, which Robison, writing in 1797, declared to be 
still in existence. 2 It is thus that we find noble lords at 
their banquets drinking the health of the Sovereign People, 
" whilst in their lairs other Brothers are meditating how 
they shall set to work in order to put at the disposal of the 
Sovereign People the possessions of their Brother Lords, 
the treasures of the banks, and the shops of the rich mer- 
chants." 3 Barruel is no doubt right in describing these 
upper class Subversives as the Brother Dupes (Freres- 
Dupes) of the Order, it was not such men as Fox, Sheridan, 
or even " the renegade Lord Stanhope " who desired to see 
a levelling down of the wealth they themselves enjoyed; 
but the plan of the Illuminati was always to use each sec- 
tion of the community for its own destruction. The real 
aims of Illuminism were embodied not in the political 
revolution devised by the Whigs to bring themselves into 
power, but in the social revolution organized by the middle- 
class malcontents, Paine, Price, and Priestly, and their 
allies amongst the disgruntled manual workers. It was by 
these men that, after the Revolution broke out in France, 
revolutionary societies were started in England, the most 
important being the London Corresponding Society, 
founded in 1792 by a shoemaker named Hardy, with 
branches all over the kingdom. Although conducting their 
agitation under the pretext of reform, it is impossible to 
see in this movement any connection with the working- 
class grievances that underlay the Industrial Revolution 

1 Application of Barruel' s Memoirs of Jacobinism to the Secret Societies 
of Ireland and Great Britain, by the translator of that work (the Hon. 
R. C. Clifford), London, 1798, p. xxii. 

2 Robison, op. cit. pp. 478, 479. a Barruel, op. cit. iv. 414. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 75 

some thirty years later; neither the doctrines nor the 
phraseology of these societies savour in any way of work- 
ing-class mentality but are both obviously of foreign 
importation, whilst their plan of organization is simply 
that of the Illuminati. " These societies," writes a con- 
temporary, " were formed on Weishaupt's corresponding 
scale," with a " Grand Council " to direct operations. 1 
And we have only to read their correspondence to recog- 
nize the truth of the further assertion that " all then- 
forms and even their modes of speech were servilely copied 
from the French " 2 — that is to say, from the French 
disciples of the Illuminati. It is certainly not British boot- 
makers or mechanics who devise such phrases as " Citizens 
of the World," the " Imprescriptible Rights of Man," or 
who would have bethought themselves of beginning a 
letter to the Convention of Paris with the words: " Illus- 
trious senators, enlightened legislators, and dear friends! " 
The phraseology of Jacobinism is here clearly apparent. 
The " traitorous correspondence " that took place during 
the autumn of 1792, when immediately after the ghastly 
massacres of September the " English Jacobins " sent 
affectionate letters of good-will to their French brethren 
and even expressed the hope of setting up a National Con- 
vention in England, must not be traced to any native 
violence on the part of British working-men, but solely to 
the workings of Illuminism. Thus, owing to the inter- 
national doctrines instilled in their minds by the adepts 
of Weishaupt, the English dupes who subscribed to 
these effusions little dreamt that the men to whom they 
addressed themselves were in reality their bitterest 
enemies. 3 

1 Clifford, Application of BarrueVs Memoirs, etc., p. 33. 

2 Clifford, op. cit. p. 34. 

* It should be remembered that at this date — September to December 
1792 — the power of the Girondins, who had shown themselves friendly to 
England, was waning and Robespierre was gaining the ascendancy. And 
Robespierre's opinion of the English is thus concisely expressed in his 
speech to the Convention on January 30, 1794: "As a Frenchman and 
representative of the people I declare that I hate the English people — I 
declare that I shall increase as far as in me lies the hatred of my fellow- 
countrymen against them. What does it matter what they think of me? 
I only hope in our soldiers and in the profound hatred the French have for 
that people." Such were the " dear friends " at whose feet the English 
Jacobins saw fit to grovel. 



76 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Internationalism has always redounded to the discredit of 
England. 

By way of further expressing their esteem for the 
Jacobins of France, the English revolutionary societies 
had collected large sums of money which they dispatched 
to Paris and also a quantity of arms made at Birmingham 
and Sheffield. 1 Fired by this example, the leading revolu- 
tionary society of Scotland, calling itself the " North 
Britons," two years later armed itself with pikes for the 
purpose of open insurrection. The plot, however, was dis- 
covered, and no less than 4000 pikes were found to have 
been ordered for Perth besides those wanted for Edin- 
burgh. 2 

By this time, 1794, the victories of the Republican 
armies had rendered the French formidable allies, and, 
before long, plans for the invasion of Great Britain began 
to be discussed by the agents of the Illuminati. Then, as 
now, Ireland was recognized as the most vulnerable point 
of attack, and for three years an Irish Society had been at 
work in that country. This association, first known as 
the Irish Brotherhood, then as the " United Irishmen," 
was organized in June 1791 on the lines of the Illuminati. 
" The proposals for it," writes Clifford, " are couched in 
the style and exact terms of the Hierophants of Illumin- 
ism." They recommend the formation of an association, 
or, as it is styled, " a beneficent conspiracy " to serve the 
people; assuming " the secrecy and somewhat of the 
ceremonial attached to Freemasonry." 3 This was effected 
by means of a central society or lodge from which other 
lodges in the different towns radiated ; chairmen or Masters 
presided over the lodges, and secretaries were appointed 
belonging only to the higher degrees. " The concatenation 

1 Oswald's speech to the Jacobins of September 30, 1792 (Aulard's 
Seances des Jacobins, iv. 346). It was Oswald, an English Jacobin, who 
seems to have suggested the idea of the terrible " Loi des Suspects " to the 
Convention and even advocated a more extreme measure still, namely to 
put to death every suspected man in France. This suggestion, emanating 
from n vegetarian (for Oswald had adopted the diet of the Brahmins after 
some years spent in India), drew from Thomas Paine the ironical remark, 
" Oswald, you have lived so long without tasting flesh that you have now 
a most voracious appetite for blood " (Letters of Redhead Yorke, 1906 
edition, p. 71). _ 

2 Clifford, op. cit. p. 35. 8 Ibid. pp. 1] 2. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 77 

of the degrees," Clifford goes on to observe, " perfectly 
coincides with Weishaupt's plan," and he illustrates the 
fact by a reproduction of the pyramidic scale of adepts, 
starting with the one controlling brain at the top and 
widening out into the lower ranks of the less initiated, 
resembling the one shown in the code of the Illuminati : 1 

N 



C C 



BBB BBB BBB BBB 

in in in in in in in in in in in in 

Committees were then formed all over Ireland, but " no 
person whatever could mention the names of the Com- 
mittee-men : they were not even known to those who had 
elected them in the case of the National or Executive Com- 
mittee. . . . Thus was the Society entirely governed by 
unknown Superiors." 2 The exact similarity between this 
system and the organization of the Babouviste conspiracy 
will be readily perceived. The official leader of the move- 
ment in Belfast was Wolfe Tone, in Dublin Napper Tandy, 
and, at first, Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Eman- 
cipation were held out as the only objects of the society, 
but in time plans of a' more subversive nature were 
admitted. Thus, when military co-operation with the 
French was contemplated and it became necessary to win 
over the troops, the. soldiers were adjured " to be true to 
the French Republic." " The better to propagate the 
system it was held out to the military that, when the 
French should come, the soldiers were to be such as them; 
that there were to be no rich but All Equality." 3 Accord- 
ingly the barracks were to be burnt down, the country set 
on fire from end to end, and all arms seized until the 
French should land. It should be noted that by this date, 
July 1797, even the appearance of liberty under the name 

1 Cf. diagram in Nachtrag . . . Original Schrijteh, p. 60. 

2 Clifford, op. cit. p. 6. 3 Ibid. 



78 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of Jacobinism had ceased to exist, and it was with the 
troops of the despotic Directory that the Irish soldiers 
were asked to coalesce. 

In all this agitation the Irish peasants played no part 
at all; indeed, on the only occasion when the French 
effected a landing the people offered vigorous resistance. 
The contemporary account of the incident is so curious 
that it must be quoted verbatim : 

" On the 24th of December (1796) the French really did make 
their appearance at Bantry; and, strange to say, they were not 
seconded in their attempts by the people, who universally rose 
in the south to oppose their invaders; but this is accounted for 
in a still more extraordinary manner. The Executive had 
received news that the French had deferred their expedition till 
spring; this circumstance threw them ' off their guard,' and in 
consequence of it no measures were taken to prepare the people 
for the reception of the French army. The people were left to 
themselves." " I hope in God," adds Clifford, " that this avowal 
made by one of their intended Governors may prove a whole- 
some lesson to that same people, and encourage them to follow 
the loyal and genuine dictates of their hearts." 1 

Indeed so little were the Irish people initiated into the 
real aims of " the beneficent conspiracy " at work in their 
midst that even the County Committees were not in the 
secret as to the nature of the engagements entered into 
with the French. 

What unhappy deluded people then were the lower associates 
who were informed of nothing, but were to be the mere agents 
of rebellion and murder, and were hurried on into this abyss of 
horror by a few political libertines who grasped at dominion, and 
wished to wade to the helm of the State through the blood of 
their countrymen! 2 

These words well describe the workings of the con- 
spiracy which from 1791 onwards has never ceased to 
exploit the troubles of Ireland in order to bring about the 
destruction of England and of Christian civilization. 

Whilst these events were taking place in Europe the 

1 Clifford, op. cit. 9, 10, quoting official report of the incident. 

2 Ibid. p. 12. This very curious pamphlet should be read by every one 
interested in the present state of affairs in Ireland, of which it offers an 
almost exact picture. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 79 

New World had been illuminized. As early as 1786 a lodge 
of the Order had been started in Virginia, and this was 
followed by fourteen others in different cities. But the 
horrors of the French Revolution, followed in 1797 by the 
books of Barruel and Robison, which supplied the key to 
events that had hitherto appeared inexplicable, opened the 
eyes of the American public to the truth of the conspiracy 
at work in its midst. The alarm that spread through the 
States was not, as it has been foolishly described, a case of 
" panic," but the recognition of a very real danger on which 
the clergy had the courage to warn their congregations 
from pulpits all over the country. 

At Charlestown on May 9, 1798, the Rev. Jedediah 
Morse preached his famous sermon on Illuminism, taking 
for his text, " This is a day of trouble and of rebuke and 
blasphemy ": 

Practically all of the civil and ecclesiastical establishments of 
Europe have already been shaken to their foundations by this 
terrible organization; the French Revolution itself is doubtless 
to be traced to its machinations; the successes of the French 
armies are to be explained on the same ground. The Jacobins 
are nothing more nor less than the open manifestation of the 
hidden system of the Illuminati. The Order has its branches 
established and its emissaries at work in America. The affiliated 
Jacobin Societies in America have doubtless had as the object 
of their establishment the propagation of the principles of the 
illuminated mother club in France. 

In July of the same year Timothy D wight, president of 
Yale, thus referred to the work of the French Revolution in 
his sermon to the people of New Haven: 

No personal or national interest of man has been uninvaded; 
no impious sentiment of action against God has been spared; 
no malignant hostility against Christ and His religion has been 
unattempted. Justice, truth, kindness, piety, and moral obliga- 
tion universally have been not merely trodden underfoot . . . 
but ridiculed, spurned, and insulted as the childish bugbears of 
drivelling idiocy. . . . For what end shall we be connected with 
men of whom this is the character and conduct? Is it that we 
may assume the same character and conduct? Is it that our 
churches may become temples of reason, our Sabbath a decade, 
and our psalms of praise Marseillaise hymns ? ... Is it that we 
may see the Bible cast into a bonfire, the vessels of the sacra- 
mental supper borne by an ass in public procession, and our 



80 WORLD REVOLUTION 

children either wheedled or terrified, uniting in the mob, chant- 
ing mockeries against God, and hailing in the sounds of the 
" Qa ira " the ruin of their religion and the loss of their souls? 
. . . Shall our sons become the .disciples of Voltaire and the 
dragoons of Marat, or our daughters the concubines of the 
Illuminati ? 

Dwight then refers to the misery wrought by the 
Republican troops in Belgium, Bolivia, Italy, and Switzer- 
land — " the happiness of the last named, and its hopes 
cut off at a single stroke, happiness erected with the labour 
and the wisdom of three centuries. . . . What have they 
spread but crimes and miseries ; where have they trodden 
but to waste, to pollute, and to destroy? " 

Needless to say, these warnings were met with furious 
remonstrances from sympathizers with the principles of 
Illuminism. The Independent Chronicle spoke of " the 
incorrigible impertinence of the clergy in turning aside 
from their legitimate functions to spread alarm about 
Illuminism"; Jefferson — whom Morse declared to be 
himself an Illuminatus — strenuously denied all imputa- 
tions against the Order, and described Weishaupt as " an 
enthusiastic philanthropist " and Barruel's revelations as 
'" the ravings of a Bedlamite." The very violence of these 
disclaimers shows how truly the shafts had gone home. 
The line of defence adopted had been laid down some ten 
years earlier by Weishaupt. " The great care of the Illu- 
minati after the publication of their secret writings," says 
Barruel, " was to persuade the whole of Germany that 
their Order no longer existed, that their adepts had all 
renounced not only their mysteries and conspiracies but 
all connection between themselves as members of a secret 
society." It is very curious to read these words written 
more than 120 years ago, for this is precisely the course 
that has been adopted throughout by the Illuminati. Still 
at the present day any reference to the role of Illuminism 
either in the French Revolution or after is immediately 
met with the assurance that the whole thing is a " mare's 
nest," and that in reality Illuminism was an unimportant 
and transitory movement, which finally ended with its 
suppression in Bavaria in 1786. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 81 

With regard to Barruel' s and Robison's revelations, 
which we are asked to believe " fell flat " — but which in 
reality created so immense a sensation that the entire first 
edition of the translation of Barruel's Memoirs was sold 
out before the fourth volume reached the Press, whilst 
Robison's book went into at least four editions — every 
effort was made at the time of their appearance to counter- 
act their effects and even to withdraw them from circula- 
tion. " The zealous brothers on the banks of the Thames 
asked for help from their German brothers " in order to 
destroy the copies of the obnoxious volumes. 1. Thereupon 
" Brother Boettiger " replied by an article in the Monthly 
Magazine for January 1798 in which he assured the British 
public that " every one concerned in unveiling Illuminism 
is now only pursuing a chimera on matters long since 
buried in profound oblivion, that since 1790 no one has 
paid the least attention to the Illuminati, that since that 
date there is no mention of them in the German lodges, 
and that, finally, proofs of this assertion are to be found in 
the papers of Bode, who had become the head of the 
Order." At least, as Barruel observes, Boettiger here 
admits " that the mysteries of Illuminism had become 
those of masonic lodges," and that the Order had not been 
annihilated in 1786 at the time of the discovery of its plots, 
as other writers of the sect had pretended, but that it had 
survived at any rate until 1790. 

A further exoneration of the Illuminati which is fre- 
quently quoted to-day appeared some years later under 
the title of De V influence attribute aux philosophes, aux 
Francs M aeons, et aux Illumines sur la Revolution de France, 
of which the author was no other than Jean Joseph 
Mounier, proposer of the Oath of the Tennis Court on 
June 20, 1789. According to this apparently reliable wit- 
ness, neither Freemasonry nor Illuminism had the slightest 
influence on the Revolution, nor had philosophy either! 
Therefore, if we are to believe Mounier, the time-honoured 
opening to nearly every existing book on the French Revo- 
lution tracing its origins to the theories of Rousseau, 
Diderot, Voltaire, and so on, must be ruled out as fictions. 

1 Barruel, iv. 218. 



82 WORLD REVOLUTION 

When we come to examine Mourner's attitude more 
closely, however, certain considerations present them- 
selves, too lengthy to enter into here, which detract some- 
what from the value of his testimony. Of these the most 
important is the fact that Mounier wrote his book in Ger- 
many, where he was living under the protection of the 
Duke of Weimar, who had placed him at the head of a 
school in that city where Boettiger himself was director of 
the college, 1 and, according to the editor of Mourner's 
work, it was from Bode, who was also at Weimar and whom 
Boettiger declared to be the head of the Illuminati, that 
Mounier collected his information! 2 And this is the sort 
of evidence seriously quoted against that of innumerable 
other contemporaries who testified to the influence of 
Illuminism on the French Revolution! 

Space unfortunately forbids quotations from these 
authorities — Lombard de Langres, the Chevalier de 
Malet, Joseph de Maistre, the Comte de Vaudreuil, Zim- 
mermann, Gochhausen, and many others — but an impor- 
tant point to notice is that they belonged to no one party, 
religion, school of thought, or nationality, but though 
widely differing in their political or religious point of view, 
agreed on this one question. Thus the argument frequently 
advanced that Barruel wrote simply in the interests of the 
Catholic Church is obviously absurd, since Robison, who 
was a Protestant, arrived independently at precisely the 
same conclusions, and the American ecclesiastics quoted 
above can certainly not be supposed to have spoken in 
obedience to the dictates of Rome. 

It will still be objected that all these witnesses and 
those who came after them were " reactionaries " eager to 
discredit the Revolution by every possible means. Was 
Louis Blanc the Socialist a reactionary? And who has 
more clearly indicated the workings of the occult forces 
beneath the movement? 3 Was George Sand, revolution- 
ary and Freemason, a " reactionary " ? And it was George 
Sand who, in referring to " the European conspiracy of 

1 Mounier, De V influence attribute, etc., p. lviii (1822 edition). 

2 Ibid. pp. 130, 212. 

3 See the whole chapter devoted to this question in the second volume 
of Louis Blanc's Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise. 



THE CONSPIRACY OF BABEUF 83 

Illuminism " and "the gigantic conceptions of Weishaupt," 
declared that Illuminism, " drawing from the inventive 
genius of its leaders and from the traditions of the Secret 
Societies of mystic Germany, appalled the world by the 
most formidable and the most learned of political and 
religious conspiracies," which " shook all dynasties on 
their thrones." 1 And Madame Sand adds: " Had these 
societies more effect in France than in the heart of the 
Germany that had given them birth ? The French Revolu- 
tion answers energetically with the affirmative." 2 

How, then, in the face of all this evidence — evidence 
which, as we shall see later, other Freemasons confirmed — 
is it possible to deny the influence of illuminized Free- 
masonry on the French Revolution? How can we doubt 
the truth of those terrible words of Barruel which the sub- 
sequent history of the world and, above all, its situation 
to-day has surely justified : 

You thought the Revolution ended in France, and the Revo- 
lution in France was only the first attempt of the Jacobins. In 
the desires of a terrible and formidable sect, you have only 
reached the first stage of the plans it has formed for that general 
Revolution which is to overthrow all thrones, all altars, annihi- 
late all property, efface all law and end by dissolving all society. 

Had not Weishaupt declared : " This revolution shall be 
the work of the Secret Societies, and that is one of our 
great mysteries " ? 

But for a brief spell after the fall of Babeuf the work 
of the conspiracy was arrested. The XVII I th of Brumaire 
dealt a crushing blow to Illuminism, and the same hand 
that had locked the door of the Pantheonistes' meeting- 
place closed down the Secret Societies. Thus the fifteen 
years during which Napoleon held the reins of power were 
the only period in the last 140 years during which Europe 
had peace from the devastating fire of Illuminism kindled 
by Weishaupt. 

1 La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, ii. 219. * Ibid. p. 260. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 

Revival of Illuminism — The Tugendbund — The Alta Vendita — The 
Industrial Revolution — Role of the Jews — The Philosophers — 
Robert Owen — " New Harmony " — Saint-Simon — Pierre Leroux 

— Fourier — Buchez — Louis Blanc — Cabet — Vidal — Pecqueur 

— Proudhon — Trade-Union Terrorism. 

After the fall of Napoleon the smouldering flames of 
Illuminism broke out afresh all over Europe. The " Ger- 
man Union," inaugurated immediately on the suppression 
of the Illuminati in Bavaria, was in reality Weishaupt's 
Order reorganized under a different name, and in the early 
years of the following century other societies such as the 
Tugendbund and the Burschenshaft were started on much 
the same lines. 1 The Tugendbund, inaugurated in about 
1812 and composed of all the most violent elements 
amongst the Illuminati, whose doctrines were those of 
Clootz and Marat, developed into a further Order known 
as the German Association and aiming at a United 
Germany. 

It is here that for the first time we can clearly detect 
the connection between Prussianism and the secret forces 
of World Revolution, though, no doubt, it could be traced 
back to a much earlier date. As we have already seen, 
Frederick the Great, through his ambassador, von der 

1 Lombard de Langres, Les Societes secretes, pp. 81, 102, 110-113. 
Metternich also regarded these German societies as the outcome of Illu- 
minism. Writing in 1832 he says: "Germany has long suffered from the 
evil which to-day covers the whole of Europe. . . . The sect of Illumines 
. . . has never been destroyed although the same (Bavarian) government 
has tried to suppress it and has been obliged to inveigh against it, and it has 
taken successively, according to circumstances and the needs of the times, 
the denominations of Tugendbund, of Burschenshaft, etc.," Memoires de 
Metternich, v. 368. 

84 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 85 

Goltz, had worked indefatigably for the rupture of the 
Franco- Austrian alliance, but at the same time his 
intrigues were conducted through a more obscure channel, 
for Frederick was a Freemason, as also were his friends the 
philosophers of France, and it was thus largely through his 
influence that the disintegrating doctrines of Voltaire were 
propagated which paved the way for the an ti -Christian 
campaign of Weishaupt. In 1807 Joseph de Maistre, who 
had the rare perspicacity to perceive the fearful danger of 
Frederick's policy to the peace and stability of Europe, 
wrote these remarkable words : 

I have always had a particular aversion for Frederick II., 
whom a frenzied century hastened to proclaim a great man, but 
who was an fond only a great Prussian. History will note this 
prince as one of the greatest enemies of the human race who has 
ever existed. 1 

But de Maistre reckoned without that conspiracy of his- 
tory which, controlled principally by German hands, was 
through the instrumentality of such agents as Carlyle, to 
maintain the prestige of Frederick in order to smooth the 
path for his successors. 

After the death of Frederick the Great his policy was 
followed not only by his nephew Frederick William II. , 
but by the disciples of Weishaupt. It was thus that the 
Illuminatus Diomedes (the Marquis de Constanza) wrote : 

In Germany there must be only one or two princes at the 
most, and these princes must be iiiuminized and so led by our 
adepts and surrounded by them that no profane man may 
approach their persons. 2 

May not the Prussian Clootz's ambiguous reference to 
"the immutable Empire of the Great Germany — the 
Universal Republic " 3 be traced to the same source of 
inspiration? It is possible, indeed, that Clootz may have 
been not only the adept of Weishaupt, but, as both 
Robespierre and Brissot suspected, the agent of the King 
of Prussia. Certain contemporaries have in fact declared 

1 Lettres inedites de Joseph de Maistre (1851), p. 97. 

2 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 397, quoting evidence given at the trial of the 
Illuminati. 

3 Clootz's speech to the Convention, September 9, 1792. 



86 WORLD REVOLUTION 

that Frederick William II. was actually an Illuminatus. 
Thus the Comte de Vaudreuil, writing to the Comte 
d'Artois from Venice in October 1790, remarked: 

What strikes me most is that the sect of the Illumines is the 
cause and instigator of all our troubles; that one finds these 
sectaries everywhere, that even the King of Prussia is imbued 
with this pernicious system; that the man who possesses his 
chief confidence (Bischoffswerder) is one of its chief heads. 1 

And Robison states that his interest in the Illuminati was 
first aroused by an invitation to enter that Society from 
" a very honourable and worthy gentleman " who informed 
him " that the King of Prussia was the patron of the Order 
and that its object was most honourable and praise- 
worthy." Robison, however, declined the invitation 
because " there was something in the character and con- 
duct of the King of Prussia which gave me a dislike to 
everything which he professed to patronize," and he was 
not surprised when later the same " honourable and worthy 
gentleman " confirmed his suspicions of the Order and 
said, " shaking his head very emphatically, ' Have nothing 
to do with it, we have been deceived, it is a dangerous 
thing.' " 2 

A connection between Prussianism and Illuminism can 
therefore be detected from the beginning but with the 
Tugendbund appears in the clear light of day. .According 
to Eckert the ultimate ends of the two intrigues were not 
identical, but each used the other for its own plan of 
world power. 

This national sentiment latent in all (German) hearts, these 
efforts towards union of the different German States, masonry 
attempted to appropriate in order to direct them towards the 
overthrow of all thrones and of all nationalities. . . . The Unity 
of Germany became then the exclusive theme of the press ; from 
the Tugendbund there issued, under high masonic direction, the 
German Association which absorbed it entirely. 

The object of this association (according to " the 
authentic Report of the Secret Associations of Germany " 
by Mannsdorf, one of the members of the upper lodges) 

1 Correspondence du Comte de Vaudreuil et du Comte d'Artois, i. 342. 
2 Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 583. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 87 

was to dethrone all the German princes with the exception of 
the King of Prussia, to bestow on this last the Imperial 
Crown of Germany, and to give to the State a democratic 
constitution. The final goal of masonry was then to bring 
about " the real or Universal Republic and the destruction 
of all nationalities." l 

It is easy to see that the Hohenzollerns might well 
make use of this intrigue in order to accomplish the first 
part of the programme — Prussian domination. 

But Illuminism had not confined itself to Germany, and 
before the fall of Napoleon a further secret society was 
organized, under the name of the Carbonari, which soon 
fell under the control of the Illuminati. Though masonic 
in their origin, the Carbonari had not begun as a revolu- 
tionary body. Their founders were avowedly Royalists 
and Catholics who, possibly deluded as to the real aims 
of Illuminism, followed the precedent laid down by 
Weishaupt of taking Christ for their Grand Master. But 
before long the adepts of revolutionary masonry penetrated 
into their ranks and, taking the lead, acquired control over 
the whole association. " Italian genius/' says Monsignor 
Dillon, " soon outstripped the Germans in astuteness, and 
as soon as, perhaps sooner than, Weishaupt had passed 
away, the supreme government of all the Secret Societies 
of the world was exercised by the Alta Vendita or highest 
lodge of the Italian Carbonari." 2 It was this formidable 
society, the " Haute Vente Romaine," which from 1814 to 
1848 directed the activities of all the Secret Societies. Far 
more subtle, and therefore more formidable, than the 
Carbonari, the leaders of the Haute Vente conducted their 
campaign precisely on the lines of the Illuminati, of which 
they were indeed the direct continuation. 3 Thus, according 
to the custom of the earlier Order, followed by Anarcharsis 
Clootz and Gracchus Babeuf, the members of the Haute 
Vente all adopted classical pseudonyms, that of the leader, 
a corrupt Italian nobleman, being Nubius. This young 
man, rich, handsome, eloquent, and absolutely reckless, 

1 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 227, 228. 

2 Monsignor George F. Dillon, The War of Anti- Christ with the Church 
and Christian Civilization, p. 63 (1884). 

3 Ibid. p. 63. 



88 WORLD REVOLUTION 

was " a visionary with an idee fixe of elevating a pedestal 
for his own vanity." * But it was not in the band of dis- 
solute young Italians he gathered around him, but in his, 
Jewish allies, that Nubius found his principal support. 
Throughout the early years of the nineteenth century Jews 
in increasing numbers had penetrated into the masonic 
lodges and also into certain Secret Societies. The Egyptian 
rite of Memphis had been founded before the French Revo- 
lution by the Jewish Illuminatus Cagliostro, and " in 1815 
the Rite of Mizraim, consisting of ninety Jewish degrees, 
was established by the Jews in Paris. Ragon, the French 
Masonic authority, calls it Jewish masonry." 2 

Joseph de Maistre declared the Jews now to be playing 
an active part in Illuminism — a system which he had 
studied deeply and believed to be " the root of all the evil 
then afflicting Europe." 3 " There are certainly, according 
to all appearances," he wrote in 1816, " societies organized 
for the destruction of all the bodies of nobility, of all noble 
institutions, of all the thrones and of all the altars of 
Europe. The sect which makes use of everything seems at 
this moment to turn the Jews to great account and we 
must very much beware of them." 4 In the Haute Vente 
for the first time we find them taking the lead. Rich mem- 
bers of the Ashkenazim contributed to the funds of the 
society, lesser Jews acted as their cleverest agents. 5 
Amongst the latter class, one who had assumed the pseu- 
donym of Piccolo Tigre displayed the greatest energy. 
Masquerading as an itinerant jeweller and moneylender, 
Piccolo Tigre travelled about Europe carrying the instruc- 
tions of the Haute Vente to the Carbonari and returning 
laden with gold for the money-boxes of Nubius. On these 
journeys Piccolo Tigre received the protection of the 
masonic lodges everywhere, although the greater number 
of the men who composed them were held by the Haute 
Vente in supreme contempt. " Beyond the Masons and 
unknown to them," writes Monsignor Dillon, " though 

1 J. Cr6tineau-Joly, VEglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, ii. 383. 

1 A. Cowan, The X-rays in Freemasonry, p. 160. 

1 Lettres inedites de Joseph de Maistre, p. 368. 

4 Joseph de Maistre, Quatre chapitres inedits sur la Russie, chap. iv. 

* Monsignor Dillon, op. cit. p. 72. Cr6tineau-Joly, op. cit. ii. 131. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 89 

formed generally from them, lay the deadly secret con- 
clave, which nevertheless used and directed them for the 
ruin of the world and of their own selves." 

So important had the role of Piccolo Tigre become, that 
in 1822 we find him writing a letter of instruction to the 
Haute Vente Piedmontaise of which the following extract 
will serve to indicate the methods that he advocated and 
incidentally their similarity with those of the Illuminati : 

In the impossibility in which our brothers and friends find 
themselves, to say, as yet their last word, it has been judged 
good and useful to propagate the light everywhere, and to set 
in motion all that which aspires to move. For this reason we do 
not cease to recommend you to affiliate persons of every class to 
every manner of association no matter of what kind, only pro- 
vided that mystery mid secrecy shall be the dominant characteristics. 
All Italy is covered with religious confraternities and with peni- 
tents of diverse colours. Do not fear to slip in some of your 
people into the very midst of these flocks, led, as they are, by a 
stupid devotion. Let our agents study with care the personnel of 
these confraternity men, and they will see that little by little 
they will not be wanting in a harvest. Under a pretext the most 
futile but never political or religious, create by yourselves, or 
better yet, cause to be created by others, associations having 
commerce, industry, music, the fine arts, etc., for objects. 
Reunite in one place or another — in the sacristies or chapels 
even — these tribes of yours as yet ignorant ; put them under 
the pastoral staff of some virtuous priest, well known but 
credulous, and easy to be deceived. Then infiltrate the poison 
into those chosen hearts; infiltrate it in little doses and as if 
by chance. Afterwards, upon reflection, you will yourselves 
be astonished at your success. 

The essential thing is to isolate a man from his family, to 
cause him to lose his morals. He is sufficiently disposed by the 
bent of his character to flee from household cares and to run 
after easy pleasures and forbidden joys. He loves the long con- 
versations of the cafes, and the idleness of shows. Lead him 
along, sustain him, give him an importance of some kind, teach 
him discreetly to grow weary of his daily labours, and by this 
manoeuvre, after having separated him from his wife and 
children and after having shown him how painful are all his 
duties, you will then excite in him the desire of another exist- 
ence. Man is a born rebel. Stir up the desire of rebellion until 
it becomes a conflagration, but in such a manner that the 
conflagration does not break out. This is a preparation for the 
great work that you have to begin. 

When you shall have insinuated into a few souls disgust for 



90 WORLD REVOLUTION. 

family and for religion (the one nearly always follows in the wake 
of the other), let fall some words which will provoke the desire 
of being affiliated to the nearest lodge. This vanity of the 
citizen or of the bourgeois for being enrolled in Freemasonry 
is something so banal and so universal that I am always full 
of admiration for human stupidity. I am not surprised to see 
the whole world knocking at the door of all the Venerables and 
asking these gentlemen for the honour of being one of the 
workmen chosen for the reconstruction of the Temple of Solo- 
mon. To find oneself a member of a lodge, to feel oneself apart 
from one's wife and children, called upon to guard a secret 
which is never confided to one, is for certain natures a delight 
and an ambition. 

The Alta Vendita desires that under one pretence or another, 
as many princes and wealthy persons as possible should be 
introduced into the Masonic Lodges. Princes of a sovereign 
house and those who have not the legitimate hope of being 
kings by the grace of God, all wish to be kings by the grace of 
a Revolution. The Duke of Orleans is a Freemason. . . . The 
prince who has not a kingdom to expect is a good fortune for 
us. There are many of them in that plight. Make Freemasons 
of them; these poor princes will serve our ends, while thinking 
to labour only for their own. They form a magnificent sign- 
board. 

It is upon the lodges that we count to double our ranks. 
They form, without knowing it, our preparatory novitiate. 
They discourse without end upon the dangers of fanaticism, 
upon the happiness of social equality and upon the grand 
principles of religious liberty. They launch amidst their feast- 
ings thundering anathemas against intolerance and persecu- 
tion. This is positively more than we require to make adepts. 
A man imbued with these fine things is not very far from us* 
There is nothing more required than to enlist him. 

It was thus by systematic demoralization that the 
leaders of the Haute Vente, like the Illuminati, hoped to 
establish their ascendancy over the " peoples " of Europe. 
But in order to understand the manner in which they set 
out to accomplish this purpose we must now examine the 
ground on which they had to work. 

The Industrial Revolution 

It is of the utmost importance to realize that the people 

at this period were suffering from very real grievances. 

These grievances weighed less, however, on the agricultural 

than on the industrial workers, whose conditions of life 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 91 

were often terrible. This fact no one has ever attempted 
to deny, and we need not have recourse to the writings of 
Socialists to gain an idea of the slavery endured by men, 
women, and children in the mines and factories of Europe 
during the years following on the Napoleonic wars, for we 
shall find the whole case stated with more accuracy and 
far greater eloquence in the letters of Lord Shaftesbury, 
whose whole life was devoted to the cause of the poor and 
oppressed. 

What was the reason for this aggravation of the 
workers' lot ? Partly the speeding up of industry brought 
about by the introduction of machinery; partly, in Eng- 
land, the rapidly increasing population, but in France to a 
large extent the situation must be directly attributed to 
the Revolution. We have already seen how the destruc- 
tion of trade unions and increase in the days of labour by 
the abolition of national holidays had added to the workers' 
burden, but a further effect of the great upheaval had been 
the transference of power from the aristocracy to the bour- 
geoisie with disastrous consequences to the people. In a 
word the destruction of feudalism had inaugurated the 
reign of Commercialism. This is admitted by no less an 
authority than Marx himself. 

The bourgeoisie has played in history a most revolutionary 
part. The bourgeoisie, whenever it has conquered power, has 
destroyed all feudal, patriarchal, and idyllic relations. It has 
pitilessly torn asunder all the many-coloured feudal bonds which 
united men to their " natural superiors," and has left no tie 
twixt man and man but naked self-interest and callous cash 
payment. It has drowned religious ecstasy, chivalrous enthu- 
siasm, and middle-class sentimentality in the ice-cold water of 
egotistical calculation. It has transformed personal worth into 
mere exchange value, and substituted for countless dearly- 
bought chartered freedoms the one and only unconscionable 
freedom of Free Trade. It has, in one word, replaced an 
exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions by 
exploitation open, unashamed, direct,_and brutal. 1 

Thus in the opinion of the leading prophet of modern 
Socialist thought, it was the destruction of feudalism that led 
to the enslavement of the proletariat. Exaggerated as this 

1 Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Friedrich 
Engels, p. 9. * ' 



92 WORLD REVOLUTION 

indictment of the bourgeoisie may be, there is a certain 
degree of truth in Marx's theory. The class that lives on 
inherited wealth is always the barrier to the exploitation 
of the workers. To the noble who paid 500 louis for his 
carrosse, or the duchess who never asked the price of her 
brocaded gown, where was the advantage of underpaying 
the workman or the dressmaker? " Sweating " results 
largely from the attempt to bring commodities within the 
reach of a class that cannot or will not pay a price allowing 
a fair rate of remuneration to the worker. After the revo- 
lution, when aristocracy with its careless expenditure and 
its traditional instincts of benevolence had taken refuge 
in garrets, these were the classes that supported industry, 
and it is thus against " the newly rich " that we find the 
bitterest complaints of the people directed. 

At the same time, amongst the bourgeoisie had arisen 
a new influence that Marx is careful not to indicate, but 
about which the Socialist Malon is more explicit : 

Feudalism signifies privilege granted in return for certain 
duties agreed upon; judaized plutocracy recognizes no duty, it 
has only one object, to appropriate the largest possible part of 
the work of others, and of the social accumulation in order to 
use and abuse it selfishly. That is its great moral indignity, and 
the signal for its approaching fall in the name of public welfare 
and of the interests of Humanity. 

We shall find the same opinion expressed later by the 
Anarchist Bakunin. 

The Jew was of course not alone in exploiting the 
workers; but the spirit of the Jew, permeating commerce 
in every country — in France, in Germany, above all in 
America — undoubtedly contributed to the industrial 
oppression against which Marx inveighs. Under the mon- 
archy the Jews had been held in check by laws limiting 
their activities, but the edicts passed at the beginning of 
the Revolution, decreeing their complete emancipation, 
had removed all restraints to their rapacity. 

By the Jewish race 1789 is therefore hailed as the year 
of deliverance. Without going so far as M. Drumont in 
saying that the Revolution delivered the people from the 
aristocrats in order to hand them over to the Jews, it 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 93 

cannot be denied that the power of the Jews over the 
people was immensely increased by the overthrow of the 
monarchy and aristocracy. Whether they deliberately 
contributed to this end it is impossible to say, but their 
influence was suspected by contemporaries, as may be 
seen by the following passage from Prudhomme, an ardent 
democrat and in no way to be accused of anti-Semitism: 
The French Revolution did a great deal of good to the Jews; 
it entirely proscribed that antiquated prejudice which caused 
the remains of this ancient people to be regarded as a race of 
degraded men below all others. The Jews in France for a long 
while paid no longer at the barriers, as under the reign of Saint 
Louis, the same dues that were exacted from the cloven-footed. 
But every year each Jewish family was taxed 40 livres for the 
right of habitation, or protection and tolerance. This due was 
suppressed on the 20th of July, 1790. The Jews were, so to 
speak, naturalized French and took the rank of citizens. What 
did they do to show their gratitude? What they did before; 
they have not changed, they have not mended their ways, 
they contributed not a little to the fall of assignats. The disorder 
of our finances was a Peruvian mine for them; they have not 
abated their infamous traffic; on the contrary, civil liberty has 
only availed them to extend their stock-jobbing speculations. 
Public misery became a rich patrimony to them. . . . The 
Jews took impetus. The Government had need of them, and 
God knows how dearly they have made the Republic pay the 
resources that it demanded of them. What mysteries of iniquity 
would be revealed if the Jews, like the mole, did not make a 
point of working in the dark! In a word and to say all, the 
Jews have never been more Jews than since we tried to make 
of them men and citizens. 1 

But it was the peasants who became the chief sufferers 
from the domination of the Jews. Under the Old Regime, 
the feudal dues had proved oppressive, but in many 
instances the seigneurs were the benefactors and protectors 
of their vassals. The Jewish usurers on whom the peasant 
proprietors now depended to carry on if crops failed or 
weather proved unpropitious, showed no indulgence. 

" As soon as he " (the peasant), writes Daniel Stern, " has 

1 Crimes de la Revolution, iii. 44. Burke relates that the Jews made large 
profits out of the plunder of the Churches, and that he is told " the very- 
sons of such Jew-jobbers have been made bishops, persons not to be sus- 
pected of any Christian superstition " {Reflections on the French Revolution, 
p. 254). This may explain the apostasy of certain prelates on the 8th of 
November, 1793. 



94 WORLD REVOLUTION 

entered into commercial relations with this rusS race, as soon as 
he has put his name at the foot of a paper which he has read and 
re-read without perceiving the hidden clause that does for him, 
the peasant, in spite of all his finesse, will never succeed in recov- 
ering his liberty. Henceforth his activity, his intelligence, the 
benefits of Providence who sends him rich harvests will profit 
him nothing, but only his new master. The exorbitant interest 
on a very small capital will absorb his time and his labours. 
Every day he will see the comfort of his family diminish and his 
difficulties increase. As the fatal day approaches when the debt 
falls due the sombre face of his creditor warns him that he can 
expect no respite. He must make up his mind, he must go 
further along the road of perdition, borrow again, always borrow 
until ruin has been brought about, and fields, meadows, and 
woods, house, flocks, and home all have passed from his indus- 
trious hands into the rapacious ones of the usurer." l 

In a word, the peasant inherited from the aristocrat; 
he was disinherited by the usurer. Here is the true history 
of the disinherited, not in France alone, but in Russia, 2 in 
Austria, in Poland; everywhere that the worker lives by 
tilling his own soil the abolition of feudalism has led to the 
domination of the money-lender, and the money-lender is 
in most cases a Jew. If, exasperated by this tyranny, the 
peasants from time to time have given way to violence 
and turned on their oppressors, is it altogether surprising ? 
When in the fourteenth century the peasants rose against 
the noblesse, the blame, we are told, must rest solely with 
the nobles. Yet why is peasant fury when it took the 
form of a " jacquerie " to be condoned, and when it takes 
the form of a " pogrom " to be remorselessly condemned? 
Surely in one case as much as the other the plea of uncon- 
trollable exasperation may be with justice put forward. 

The industrial worker as well as the peasant found the 

1 La Revolution de 1848, by Daniel Stern, ii. 89 (La Comtesse d'Agoult). 

* See the account given on his journey through White Russia in 1816 
by the Grand Duke Nicholas, who, whilst admitting the support given to 
the Imperial authority by the Jews, remarks: " The general ruination 
of the peasantry of these provinces is attributable to the Jews, who are 
second in import to the landowners only; by their industries they exploit 
to the utmost the unfortunate population. They are everything here — 
merchants, contractors, pothouse-keepers, millers, carriers, artisans, etc., 
and they are so clever in squeezing and cheating the common people that 
they advance money on the unsown bread and discount the harvest before 
the fields are sown. They are regular leeches who suck up everything and 
completely exhaust this province," (E. A. Brayley Hodgett's The Court 
of Russia in the Nineteenth Century, i. 161). 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 95 

Jew an exacting taskmaster. It was not only the introduc- 
tion of machinery that at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century brought about the speeding up of industry, but 
the spirit of the new commercialism, which succeeded to 
the leisurely methods of the Old Regime. As M. Drumont 
has expressed it, if the workers paused for breath the cry 
went up from the statisticians: " What are we coming to? 
England manufactured 375 million trouser buttons last 
year and we have only produced 374 millions! " 

This driving force behind the worker, this spirit of cut- 
throat competition, was largely attributable to the Jew. 

At any rate, whether we regard the " Capitalistic 
system " as an evil or not, we cannot deny that the Jews 
were mainly responsible for it. 

In order to appreciate thoroughly the insincerity of 
Marx with regard to this question, it is only necessary to 
glance through his book Das Capital and then the work of 
Werner Sombart on The Jews and Modern Capitalism. 
*' The Jew," as Sombart remarks, " embodied modern 
Capitalism," * and he goes on to describe, step by step, the 
building up by Jewish hands of the system which super- 
seded the Old Regime of amicable trading and peaceful 
industry; he shows the Jew as the inventor of advertise- 
ment, 2 as the employer of cheap labour, 3 as the principal 
participant in the stock-jobbing or agiotage that prevailed 
at the end of the first French Revolution. 4 But it is above 
all as the usurer that the Jew achieved power. " Modern 
Capitalism," says Sombart, " is the child of money- 
lending," 5 and the Jew, as we have seen, is the money- 
lender par excellence. The great fortune of the Rothschilds 
was built up on this basis. The principal " loan-floaters " 
of the world, 6 they were later the first railway kings. 7 The 
period of 1820 onwards became, as Sombart calls it, " the 
age of the Rothschilds," so that by the middle of the 
century it was a common dictum, " There is only one 
power in Europe, and that is Rothschild." 8 

Now how is it conceivable that a man who set out 

1 Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, p. 50. 

* Ibid. p. 139. 3 Ibid. p. 150. 4 Ibid. p. 101. 

• Ibid. p. 189. 6 Ibid.^pp. 101, 103. 7 Ibid. p. 105 

8 Ibid. The Jews and Modern Capitalism, p. 99. 



96 WORLD REVOLUTION 

honestly to denounce Capitalism should have avoided all 
reference to its principal authors ? Yet even in the section 
of his book dealing with the origins of Industrial Capital- 
ism, where Marx refers to the great financiers, the stock- 
jobbing and speculation in shares, and what he describes 
as " the modern sovereignty of finance," he never once 
indicates the Jews as the leading financiers, or the Roths- 
childs as the super-capitalists of the world. As well might 
one sit down to recount the history of wireless telegraphy 
without any reference to Signor Marconi! How are we 
to explain this astounding omission ? Only by recognizing 
that Marx was not sincere in his denunciations of the 
Capitalistic system, and that he had other ends in view. 
I shall return to this point later in connection with the 
career of Marx. 

Such, then, was the condition of things at the beginning 
of the period known as the industrial revolution. The 
grievances of the workers were very real; the need for 
social reconstruction urgent, the gulf between poverty and 
riches greater than ever before, and the Government of 
France had no schemes of reform to offer. If only a great 
man had then arisen to lead the people back into paths 
of sanity and progress, to show them in that fatal year of 
1789 new-born democracy had taken the wrong turning 
and wandered into a pathless jungle whence it could only 
emerge by retracing its footsteps, and starting afresh led 
by the light of its own day, not by the will o' the wisp of 
illuminized freemasonry! 

Unhappily at this new crisis in the history of the work- 
ing classes there was no one to point the way, no one who 
had the insight and the courage to rise and declare: " The 
great experiment of 1789 to 1794 has proved a failure, the 
principles on which it was founded have been weighed in 
the balance and found wanting, the goals it set before us 
have turned out to be mirages towards which we have 
marched too long with bleeding feet, the methods it 
employed were atrocious and must never be repeated, the 
men who led it were the enemies of the people and such as 
they shall never deceive us again. There is no hope for 
suffering humanity but to repudiate the Revolution and all 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 97 

its works, and to strike out a fresh path with new hopes, 
new aims founded not on the dreams of visionaries or the 
schemes of demagogues but on the true desires of the 
people." 

Instead of rallying the people by such a trumpet-call 
as this, the men who now arose had nothing better to offer 
than the worn-out creed of their revolutionary predeces- 
sors. The doctrines that had proved fallacious, the visions 
that had turned out to be delusions, the battle-cries that 
had led the people to disaster were all to be again revived 
with the same assurance as if in the past they had been 
attended with triumphant success. 

The Philosophers 

The earliest pioneer of the movement in England, later 
to be known as Socialism, was the English cotton mill- 
owner, Robert Owen. At the outset of his career it seemed 
that Owen might really prove to be the man the people 
needed, the enlightened reformer who, sweeping aside the 
fallacious theories of the French Revolution, was to estab- 
lish the industrial system on new lines. The work of Owen 
at New Lanark was wholly admirable, the proper housing 
of the workers, the better education of the children, and 
indeed of the whole population by the inculcation of ideas 
of thrift, sobriety, and cleanliness, brought about a com- 
plete regeneration of the town and excited universal 
admiration. In all these schemes their author encountered 
no resistance. Socialists are fond of declaring that " the 
upper classes " are perfectly indifferent to the welfare of 
the workers, and that nothing but revolutionary agitation 
will rouse them. The history of Robert Owen provides a 
striking instance to the contrary, for it was amongst the 
so-called upper classes," dukes, bishops, statesmen, even 
crowned heads — for the Czar Nicholas I. visited him in 
person — that he received his principal support. New 
Lanark speedily became a place of pilgrimage for every one 
interested in social reform, and Owen found himself in 
danger of having his head turned by the adulation of the 
great. 



98 WORLD REVOLUTION 

It must be understood, however, that Owen's experi- 
ment was not conducted on Socialistic principles. Living 
in the big house and driving about in his carriage " like a 
prince amongst his subjects," * Owen played the part 
simply of a benevolent autocrat. 2 His employes existing on 
the wage system were obliged to work eight to ten hours a 
day, 3 and were decorated with humiliating badges if they 
proved idle or inefficient. The proceeds of industry were 
not distributed amongst the workers, but gathered in by 
Owen himself and spent as he saw fit. It is true that from 
the model shop he erected in the town he drew no profit, 
goods being dealt out to customers at cost price, but with 
a lordly income Owen could well afford to indulge in this 
charitable hobby. No less honour must be attributed to 
him on this account, but the fact remains that Owen's 
philanthropy at New Lanark was conducted on the system 
Socialists condemn as " capitalistic." 

At any rate the experiment proved triumphantly suc- 
cessful, but unhappily Owen allowed himself to be led from 
the path of sane and practical reforms into a wilderness of 
philosophic speculation. How are we to explain this unfor- 
tunate aberration? Only by the fact that Owen had 
fallen under the influence of the occult forces at work on 
the Continent, for if we examine his writings in the light 
of the doctrines described in the first chapter of this book, 
we cannot fail to perceive that his mind was permeated 
with Illuminism. Thus the fundamental point of Owen's 
teaching consists in the assumption that Man is the 
creature of circumstances, and that character results solely 
from environment. Therefore by removing him from evil 
conditions Man will inevitably be " transformed into an 
intelligent, rational and good being." 4 Further, the evil 
conditions that at present exist are simply the result of 
civilization, which, like Weishaupt, Owen held to be the 
bane of humanity. " All the nations of the earth, with all 
the boast of each respecting their advance in what they call 

1 Life of Robert Owen, by Sargant, p. 30. 

2 Cf. Holyoake, The Co-operative Movement, p. 13. " Owen ... was 
one of the small class of benevolent Tories who regard power as including 
an obligation to use it for the advantages of the people." 

3 Sargant, op. cit. 217. 

4 Life of Robert Owen by himself, p. 60. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 99 

civilization, are to-day governed by force, fraud, false- 
hood, and fear, emanating from ignorance in governors and 
governed." 1 Consequently Owen declared: "You must 
think of me as not belonging to the present system of 
society, but as one looking with the greatest delight at its 
entire annihilation, so that ultimately not one stone of it 
shall be left upon another." 2 

All this is only another way of expressing Weishaupt's 
theory that " Man is not bad except as he is made so by 
arbitrary morality. He is bad because Religion, the State, 
and bad examples pervert him," and therefore it is nec- 
essary to bring about " the total destruction of the existing 
civil system." 

Indeed certain passages of Owen are almost word for 
word the same as those that occur in the code of Weishaupt. 
For example, in the latter it was stated that the aim of the 
Illuminati was " to make of the human race, without any 
distinction of nation, condition or profession, one good and 
happy family ," and Owen announced " that new state of 
existence upon earth, which, when understood and applied 
rationally to practice, will cordially unite all as one good 
and enlightened family. 19 3 

It is idle to attribute these extraordinary resemblances 
— of which many more examples might be given — to 
mere coincidence, and to suppose that the Yorkshire 
cotton-mill owner evolved the same conclusions and even 
the same phraseology as the Bavarian professor out of his 
own inner consciousness. And indeed, as Owen's biog- 
rapher points out, he himself " dimly indicates the pos- 
session of a philosophy which would regenerate society if 
men's minds were prepared to receive it. With a Pytha- 
gorean reticence, he reserves to himself and his initiated 
an esoteric doctrine of which the world is unworthy." 4 
What could this doctrine be but Illuminism, which Owen, 
obedient to the custom of the Order, is careful not to 
reveal? 

But it is in the matter of religion that Owen most 
clearly betrays the source of his inspiration. By no other 

1 Life of Robert Owen by himself, p. 77. 2 Ibid. p. xxii. 

3 Ibid. p. 154. * Sargant, op. cit. p. 76. 



100 WORLD REVOLUTION 

means can his campaign of militant atheism be explained. 
In a man of Weishaupt's moral character hatred of 
Christianity is not surprising, but that Owen, filled with 
ardour for the good of humanity, a sincere and tireless 
philanthropist, should have paid no tribute to the great 
Teacher of love and compassion is so extraordinary as to 
be inexplicable by any facts hitherto set forth by his biog- 
raphers. But when we examine his theories, it is easy to 
see whence he derived them, for what are his ideas of a 
" Rational Society " and his perpetual allusions to reason 
but the old doctrine of Weishaupt that " Reason should 
be the only code of Man?" — a doctrine which had 
already found expression in Paine' s Age of Reason and in 
the " Feasts of Reason " celebrated in the churches of 
Paris? It was then under this malign influence that Owen 
gave vent to sentiments utterly foreign to his natural 
character, as, for example, his declaration that " the reli- 
gions of the world are horrid monsters and real demons 
of humanity which swallow up all its rationality and happi- 
ness." 1 Are we not forcibly reminded by such utterances 
of the diatribes of the Illuminatus Clootz on " the nullity 
of all religions " ? At moments Owen even rivals Clootz in 
violence. " Religion," Clootz had written, " is a social 
disease which cannot be too quickly cured. A religious 
man is a depraved animal," 2 and Owen echoes the senti- 
ment by saying that " the fundamental notions of every 
religion . . . have made man the most inconsistent and 
most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these 
systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal," etc. 3 
The occasion on which these words were uttered by 
Owen was the great public meeting where he had deter- 
mined " to denounce all the religions of the world." 4 This 
day he long afterwards declared to have been the most 
glorious of his life, but in reality it simply had the effect of 
alienating from him public sympathy and destroying all 
his power for good. Led still further along the path of 
Illuminism, and, according to his biographer, " inflamed 
with an extravagant desire for notoriety," Owen, seven 

1 Life of Robert Owen by himself, p. 207. 

1 La Republique universelle, p. 27. 

1 Sargent, op. cit. p. 129. 4 Life of Robert Owen by himself, p. 161 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 101 

years later, abandoned his flourishing experiment at New 
Lanark in order to found a colony on Communistic lines in 
America. 

For some years he had cherished the plan to " cut the 
world up into villages of 300 to 2000 souls," in which " the 
dwellings for the 200 or 300 families should be placed 
together in the form of a parallelogram," where "individ- 
ualism was to be disallowed," and " each was to work for 
the benefit of all." l Attempts to found a colony on these 
lines in Ireland proved abortive, and accordingly in 1824 
Owen sailed to the New World, where he bought a large 
tract of land named " Harmony " from some German 
colonists, disciples of the pastor Rapp. Here in the follow- 
ing year he started his " New Harmony Community of 
Equality." The Communist system was finally inaugu- 
rated, and other, settlements on the same lines were 
started both in America and Scotland. 

But Owen had calculated without taking human nature 
into account; the difficulty of eradicating the sense of 
property amongst the colonists proved an insuperable 
difficulty, and the noble desire to work for the common 
good with no thought of personal profit failed signally as 
an incentive. 2 Human passions had a strange way of 
springing to the surface even in the minds of the enthu- 
siastic Communists who composed Owen's following; thus 
the organ of the community, The Co-operative Magazine, 
relates that one fine evening a member in the full flow of a 
discourse to an open-air meeting, on the theory that all 
forms of punishment shall be replaced by kindness, hap- 
pened to perceive in the distance a small boy helping 
himself to the plums in the speaker's orchard, and instantly 
abandoning oratory, hurried towards the offender and 
administered a sound thrashing. 3 

Various attempts were made to organize the com- 
munity on different Socialistic principles. For a time the 
system known to-day as Guild Socialism was practised in 
the town of New Harmony, whilst Communism was 
banished to the country. 4 But in all these experiments 

1 Sargant, op. cit. p. 171. * Ibid. p. 254. 

* Ibid. p. 240. * Ibid. op. cit. pp. 252, 253. 



102 WORLD REVOLUTION 

human nature still remained the insuperable obstacle, and 
in 1827 Owen in despair resigned the management. The 
cause of his failure was attributed by convinced Com- 
munists to his own management. By Owen it was attrib- 
uted to the character of the people who made up the 
community. His experience, he acknowledged, " had 
shown one thing : the necessity of great caution in selecting 
members. No societies with common property and equality 
could prosper, if composed of persons unfit for their pecul- 
iar duties. In order to succeed it was needful to exclude 
the intemperate, the idle, the careless, the quarrelsome, the 
avaricious, the selfish. ..." In other words, Communist 
settlements must be composed of only perfect human beings. 
But as Owen's biographer observes: "One wonders whether 
for a society so weeded, any peculiar organization would be 
necessary. It is just the selfish and the intemperate who 
constitute the difficulty of our present arrangements." * 

The colony founded by Owen's disciple, Abram Combe, 
at Orbiston, near Glasgow, and other Communist settle- 
ments started at Ralahine in County Clare in 1831, at 
Tytherley in Hampshire in 1839, proved failures for the 
same reason, 2 and Owen himself was obliged to recognise 
his cherished scheme as impracticable. Indeed, when on 
his way back to England in 1827 he had occasion to visit 
some slave plantations in Jamaica, he came to the con- 
clusion that slavery was after all not such a bad system. 
For does not slavery provide all the blessings promised 
by Communism — the certainty of food and lodging, and 
freedom from " corroding care and anxiety " at the com- 
plete sacrifice of all personal liberty — but with the addi- 
tional advantage of being a workable system? 3 

So ended the experiment of the man whom Socialists 
proudly name " the father of British Socialism." Con- 
sidering the extraordinary dearth of practical philan- 
thropists or of tangible results to be found in the annals 
of Socialism, it is natural that its exponents should be eager 

1 Sargant, p. 256. 

s Sargant, op. cit. pp. 278-289. Orbiston started with co-operation 
but went over to Communism, and thenceforth, Sargant observes, " the 
project was doomed." 3 Ibid. op. cit. p. 266. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 103 

to claim the famous f ounder of New Lanark as one of their 
number. But in this, as in most of their pretensions, 
Socialists have shown themselves singularly dishonest, for 
it was when Owen abandoned Capitalism in favour of 
Socialism that he failed. It is therefore not the Owen of 
New Lanark but the Owen of New Harmony whom 
Socialists can justly claim as their own. Rather than admit 
this painful truth, Socialist writers in describing the career 
of Robert Owen usually content themselves with expatiat- 
ing at length on the brilliant success of New Lanark and 
omit all reference to New Harmony. It is a curious fact 
that no Socialist has so far devoted a book to a truthful 
account of past Socialistic experiments; all such failures 
are passed over in complete silence, and the theories on 
which they were founded are vaunted as if no attempt had 
ever been made to put them into practice. 

A further claim Socialists are fond of making for Robert 
Owen is that of having founded the co-operative system. 
This is again a perversion of the truth. Owen's model 
shop in New Lanark was, as we have seen, simply a benev- 
olent hobby such as a rich man drawing his profits direct 
from the industry in which the workers were engaged, and 
paying them a low rate of wages, could well afford. Owen 
did not believe in the co-operative system which was 
inaugurated by the famous Rochdale Pioneers at their 
little co-operative store in Toad Street in 1844. This was 
really the beginning of a great movement, and was fol- 
lowed by the Co-operative Society of Oldham in 1850 and 
by the co-operative societies, numbering 340,930 members, 
which were flourishing in 1874. 1 

In all this, however, neither Robert Owen nor Socialism 
can claim a share. It is true that some of the founders of 
co-operation had been influenced by Owen's example at 
New Lanark, but they did not share his Communistic 
theories, and Owen therefore " looked coldly " on the 
co-operative stores started by his so-called disciples. 2 

1 Article on " Commvinism," by Mrs. Fawcett, in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica for 1877. 

2 Beatrice Webb, The Co-operative Movement, pp. 47, 56. See also 
Holyoake, The Co-operative Movement, p. 18, and Co-operation in Rochdale, 
p. 19. " Co-operation," Holyoake observes, " is not to be identified with 



104 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Co-operation then, as Holyoake says, is simply profit 
sharing, 1 — the system with which Socialists will have 
nothing to do and indeed oppose with all their might, 
except when, like Marx, they perceive its utility as a 
stepping-stone to Communism. 

The essential difference between Co-operation and 
Communism is the system of the right to private property. 
Under the former system each person concerned in the 
business has the right to claim for his own his share of the 
profits; under the latter all profits go to the community. 
The former has frequently led to triumphant success ; the 
second has invariably ended in total failure. As Mrs. 
Fawcett in her admirable article on " Communism " 
explained, the successful co-operative societies of the last 
century were promoted by real social reformers " who had 
proved by many failures the futility of Communism as an 
engine of social regeneration," and she adds: " There is 
no movement more distinctly non -communistic than 
co-operation. It strengthens the principles of capital and 
private property by making every co-operator a Capitalist 
and thus personally interesting him in the maintenance 
of the present economic condition of society." 2 

In other words, whilst Communism aims at the con- 
centration of Capital in the hands of the State or of com- 
munists, Co-operation aims at the extension of Capital 
by distributing it amongst a larger number of individuals. 
And all experience teaches us that through Co-operation, 
not through Communism, lies the path to industrial peace. 

Whilst this really progressive movement had been 
developing in England a succession of French philosophers 
were devising further schemes for the reorganization of 
industry, later to be classified under the generic term of 
Socialism. 

First on the list comes the Comte de Simon, grandson 
of the famous author of the Memoires relating to the court 
of Louis XIV. Born in 1760 with an unbalanced brain 

Owen," but since it was his shop at New Lanark that suggested the idea 
to the future co-operators Owen may be said to have " originated co-opera* 
tion without intending it or believing in it." 

1 Holyoake, The Co-operative Movement, p. 24. 

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica for 1877. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 105 

inherited from an insane mother, Saint-Simon had early 
thrown himself into the wildest excesses and led the life of 
" an adventurer in quest of gold and glory," x but after a 
while, weary of orgies, he had turned his attention to the 
regeneration of the world, in which he believed himself 
destined to play the leading part. Since this book is not 
intended to form a history of Socialism, but only to indi- 
cate the relation between Socialistic theories and the 
course of the World Revolution, it would be beside the 
point to describe in detail the philosophy of Saint-Simon. 
Suffice it then to state briefly that according to his theory 
of industrial reconstruction there was no way to prevent 
the exploitation of man by man but to place, not only all 
property, but all human beings under State control, thus 
arriving " not at absolute equality but at a hierarchy " 
in which " each would be classed according to his capacity 
and rewarded according to his work " — a formula which 
was only another rendering of the Babouviste maxim: 
" Every one according to his strength; to every one 
according to his needs." 2 

In a word, Saint-Simonisme was simply a variation of 
our old friend Babouvisme, of which the tradition had been 
carried on by Babeuf's colleague Buonarotti. Saint- 
Simon's inspiration must, however, be traced still further 
back than the Chief of Equals, namely to Weishaupt, 
whose doctrines survived not only amongst the Babou- 
vistes but, as we have seen, in the Haute Vente Romaine. 

Saint-Simon, who, we know, was connected with this 
formidable secret society, accordingly continued the great 
scheme of Weishaupt by proclaiming the abolition of 
property, of inheritance, the dissolution of the marriage 
tie, and the break-up of the family — in a word, the 
destruction of civilization. Like Robert Owen, Saint- 
Simon frankly declared that the existing social system was 
dead and must be completely done away with. The French 
Illuminatus, however, did not fall into the error of his 
English contemporary, of alienating public opinion by the 
repudiation of Christianity; on the contrary, faithful to 

1 Thureau-Dangin, La Monarchic de Juillet, i. 221. 
2 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 82. 



106 WORLD REVOLUTION 

the directions of Weishaupt, Saint-Simon, in his dook 
Le Nouveau Christianisme, set out to prove that his system 
was simply the fulfilment of Christ's teaching on the 
brotherhood of man, which had become perverted by the 
belief in the necessity for subduing the flesh; " therefore in 
order to re-establish Christianity on its true basis it was 
necessary to restore its sensual side, the absence of which 
strikes its social action with sterility." * It is easy to see 
how such a theory fits in with the plan of the Haute Vente 
for general demoralization. 

Of course, as Weishaupt had foreseen, the method of 
identifying Christianity with Socialism proved immensely 
effectual. The wild-eyed revolutionary waving a red flag 
will never gain so many converts as the mild philosopher 
who preaches peaceful revolution carried out on the 
principles of Christian love and brotherhood. It was this 
old deception of representing Christ as a Socialist which 
made the strength of Saint-Simonism, and that, practised 
later on by the so-called Christian Socialists of our own 
country, not only drew countless amiable visionaries into 
Socialism, but at the same time drove many virile minds 
from Christianity to seek relief in Nietzscheism. 

In reality no two principles could be more opposed 
than that of Christ, who taught that " a man's life con- 
sisteth not in the abundance of the things that he pos- 
sesseth," and that of the purely materialistic philosophy 
which urges mankind to strive for one thing only — 
present welfare, and to indulge the grossest sensual pas- 
sions. As to the perfectibility of human nature and the 
consequent " solidarity " between the workers borrowed 
by Saint-Simon from Weishaupt and Clootz, no one had 
ever shown the fallacy of this delusion more forcibly than 
Christ in His parable of the servant, who, being absolved 
from his debt towards his master, took his fellow-servant 
by the throat, saying, " Pay me what thou owestl " 

Saint-Simonism carried within it the germs of its own 

destruction. In 1823 its founder vainly attempted to blow 

out his brains, but only succeeded in destroying the sight 

of one eye, and lingered on for two years in semi-blindness 

1 Malon, Histoire du socialisme, ii. 15. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 107 

and misery. After his death the " Family," as his disciples 
were wont to call themselves, headed by the " Pere 
Enfantin," split up into opposing factions. It then trans- 
pired that the strangest scenes took place amongst them 
— reminiscent of the Anabaptists — " ecstasies, deliriums, 
transports"; finally, pursued by the police, the Family 
broke up amidst the hoots of the crowd. 1 

One of the first members to separate from Enfantin had 
been Pierre Leroux, who continued, however, to carry on 
Saint-Simonism with various elaborations. Out of the 
masonic trilogy Leroux selected " Equality " as the 
supreme object of desire, and this was to be obtained by a 
system of triads combining the three human faculties — 
sensation, sentiment, and knowledge. These were to be 
represented in the industrial world by trios composed of a 
workman, an artist, and a savant working together, the 
whole forming a " triad " ; a number of these triads would 
make up a workshop, a number of workshops a commune, 
and all the communes collectively were to form a State. 
But as the State was to be the sole owner of the means of 
existence, the sole director of work, the triad system of 
Leroux resolved itself finally into a mere variation on the 
Communistic State of Robespierre, Babeuf, and Saint- 
Simon. 

Meanwhile Charles Fourier, born in 1772, had devised 
another plan for the reorganization of society. Though 
not a Saint-Simonien, Fourier held with Saint-Simon that 
" civilization had taken the wrong road " (avait fait fausse 
route) 2 , and a return to Nature should be effected by giving 
a free rein to all passions. Starting from the premise that 
everything which is natural — that is to say, in accordance 
with the purely animal side of human nature — is right 
and beneficial, Fourier advocated promiscuous intercourse 
between the sexes ; even the Pare aux Cerf s of Louis XV. 
had, he considered, been needlessly condemned. 3 Greed, 
too, was particularly to be encouraged as " the mother of 
all industries," because it induced man to cultivate the 
ground and prepare food for himself. 4 

1 Daniel Stern, La Revolution de 1848, i. 36. 
,* Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 96. 3 Ibid. vi. 99 4 Ibid. op. cit. vi. 98. 



108 WORLD REVOLUTION 

It would be outside the scope of this book to follow 
Fourier into all his bewildering speculations on the future 
of our planet — that one day the moon would die of putrid 
fever, the sea, purged of brine, turn into " a pleasant drink 
like lemonade," and men, endowed with seven feet each, 
would live to the age of 144, of which 120 were to be spent 
in the exercise of " free love." * 

The point to be considered here is Fourier's scheme for 
the reconstruction of society. On one point, then, he is to 
be commended, namely, that he deprecated any repetition 
of the first French Revolution ; alone of all his kind, Fourier 
proclaimed the great experiment to have proved disastrous, 
and never wearied of fulminating against its crimes and 
follies. But in this he showed less insight than logic, for 
Fourier had been a victim of the Terror — the small 
grocer's shop he had set up in 1793 at Lyon had been 
pillaged by the troops of the Convention, and he himself 
had narrowly escaped the guillotine. 

It was therefore by peaceful methods that he proposed 
to destroy the existing Capitalistic system, and to estab- 
lish in its place " domestic associations " of workers which 
he named phalansteries, each composed of 1800 people, 
subdivided into " series," " phalanges," and " groups." 2 
Amongst these perfect equality was to reign, no one was to 
give orders, no one to be obliged to work, for in a commu- 
nity where all were able to indulge their passions freely 
there would be no temptation to idleness. Fourier even 
succeeded in surmounting the great stumbling-block of all 
Socialist systems, the question of who was to do " the 
dirty work " — this could be quite easily settled by 
encouraging the aversion to cleanliness he had observed in 
children, so that no tasks however unpleasant would be 
repugnant to them. 

This ideal condition of things clearly mapped out, 
Fourier only awaited the necessary funds to put it into 
execution, and accordingly he announced that he would be 

1 Thureau-Dangin, pp. 100, 101. 

8 See the hideous picture of one of these phalansteries — much resem- 
bling Owen's "parallelograms" — in Malon's Histoire du socialisme, ii. 
297. Fourier's idea of the " etat harmonien " was evidently taken from 
Owen's " New Harmony " settlement (Stern, i. 36). 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 109 

at home every day at 12 o'clock to receive any wealthy 
man who would supply him with 100,000 francs for the 
purpose. For ten years at the appointed hour Fourier 
patiently sat at home waiting for his expected millionaire, 
but none presented himself, and it was not until 1832 that 
he finally succeeded in raising the required sum from a 
certain Baudet Dulaury, and in the same year the first 
phalanstery was started at Conde-sur-Vesgre, but after 
the brief life of a year ended in total failure and had to be 
abandoned. 

A little later on a Saint-Simonien named Buchez, who 
in 1836 became one of the leaders of the sect, embarked on 
a campaign for combining Socialism not merely with the 
vague Christianity of Saint-Simon but with rigorous 
Catholicism. " Starting from Jesus Christ and ending 
with Robespierre," l Buchez collaborated with Roux 
Lavergne in the famous Histoire Parlementaire, in which 
he palliated the crimes of the Comite de Salut Public on 
the same moral grounds that in his TraiU complet de 
philosophie he had justified the Inquisition and the 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, namely, that " the social 
aim justifies everything " 2 — a maxim adapted from that 
of the Jacobins, " all is justified for the sake of the revolu- 
tion," derived in its turn from the doctrine adopted by 
Weishaupt that " the end justifies the means." We shall 
find many such genealogies in the language of Socialism. 

The first followers of Buchez consisted mainly of young 
bourgeois — artists, students, doctors — but by degrees a 
certain number of working-men, whom it was his principal 
aim to enlist in the movement, became interested, and 
Buchez was then able to put his theories into practice by 
starting the " associations ouvrieres " which had long been 
his dream. These were not to be Communistic in the 
sense of being State-controlled, but to be conducted on a 
system much resembling that which is known to-day as 
Guild Socialism. 

The guiding principles of these associations being 
" Equality " and " Fraternity " — for Buchez, like Leroux, 

1 Daniel Stern, La Revolution de 1848, i. 42. 
2 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 88. 



110 WORLD REVOLUTION 

had logically eliminated " Liberty " from the masonic 
formula — the workmen who composed them were invited 
to pool their tools and money and share their profits 
equally, only putting aside the sixth part to provide capital 
for carrying on the industry. In conformity with Buchez's 
conception of the teachings of Christ, the foreman, elected 
by the workers themselves, was to be the servant, not the 
master of all, hence " no more misery, no more inequality, 
no more conflicts between labour and capital." 1 

At first all went well, and so great was the enthusiasm 
aroused amongst the members of these associations that 
they now embarked ona" labour paper " named L' Atelier 
(The Workshop), edited and written by the workers them- 
selves — an experiment unique in the annals of Socialism, 
unrivalled at any rate in the Socialist movement of to-day ; 
for by no stretch of the imagination could the so-called 
11 Labour organs," or the Labour articles expressed in the 
purest journalese, that figure in the modern press be 
supposed to emanate from the pens of working-men. The 
episode of the Atelier is all the more a tribute to the 
principles of true democracy, in that the views it presented 
gave evidence of a far greater degree of sanity than those 
of middle-class exponents of Socialism; for the writers, 
whilst applauding the past Revolution they had been 
taught to regard as the source of all social regeneration, 
deprecated a repetition of violence, and warned the 
workers against any connection with the secret societies. 

A significant result of this parting company between 
Socialism and Illuminism was shown in the abandonment 
of the campaign of militant atheism that had distinguished 
the earlier revolutionary movement, and the readers of the 
Atelier were enjoined to regard the clergy no longer as 
" suspects " but as possible allies. " The Revolution has 
only to proclaim itself Christian, to desire only what 
Christianity commands," and the clergy will be obliged to 
unite with it. 

Unhappily, in spite of these lofty ideals and the 
undoubted sincerity of the men who professed them, the 
" workers' associations " were doomed to failure, for the 

1 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 89. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 111 

simple reason that their founder had reckoned without the 
weaknesses of human nature. After the first elan had sub- 
sided, the foreman became weary of being the servant of 
all. The workers found no stimulus to effort in the system 
of equal payment, and all chafed at the necessity for 
putting by a sixth part of the profit. 1 Finally, the difficulty 
of combining Christianity and revolution proved insuper- 
able, and the workers, obliged to choose between the two, 
split into opposing camps, thus putting an end to the 
associations. 

Meanwhile, another enthusiastic Robespierriste, Louis 
Blanc, was developing his scheme of working-men's asso- 
ciations on much the same lines, but with the difference 
that they were to be under State control. 2 Also the idea 
of Christianity was eliminated, for Louis Blanc repudiated 
religion in any form and derided Buchez as a sentimenta- 
list. 

It is usual to attribute to Louis Blanc the doctrine of 
" the right to work " (le droit au travail) which figured so 
prominently in the Revolution of 1848. In reality the idea 
dated from Robespierre, and may be found clearly set 
forth in Article X. of his " Declaration of the Rights of 
Man," on which the Constitution of 1793 was founded. 
Yet if Robespierre must be regarded as the author of the 
actual formula of the right to work — that is to say, of the 
duty of the State to provide every man with work, or with 
the means of subsistence when out of employment — the 
principle had been recognized long before the Revolution. 
Had not the Government of Louis XVI. provided work, at 
great expense to the State, by starting brickyards, work- 
shops, etc., for the unemployed of Paris? Indeed, as Karl 
Marx, who stigmatizes the doctrine of " the right to work " 
asa" confused formula," truly observes: " What modern 
State does not feed its poor in one form or another? " 3 

Louis Blanc, then, in his book L' Organisation du travail 
originated nothing; his doctrines were those of Rousseau, 
Robespierre, and Babeuf , supplemented by the theorizings 

1 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 93. 

2 Malon, Histoire socialiste, ii. 267. 

* Marx, La Lutte des classes en France, p. 57. 



112 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Cabet, and Buonarotti, and his 
system that which was to be later known as State Socialism. 
The State, he held, must regulate the conditions of labour 
with a firm hand. " We wish for a strong government, 
because in the regime of inequality in which we are still 
vegetating there are the weak who need a social force to 
protect them." But in time the State was to undergo the 
process described later on by Lenin as " withering away." 
" One day if the dearest wish of our heart is not disap- 
pointed, one day will come when there will be no further 
need of a strong and active government because there will 
be no longer an inferior and minor class of society. Until 
then the establishment of a tutelary authority is indis- 
pensable." * 

All Louis Blanc's schemes were founded on such 
Utopian premises. 

But if his hopes for the future were tinged with too 
roseate a hue, his outlook on the present was one of 
unrelieved gloom. This attitude was no doubt partly owing 
to personal grievances. Nature had been unkind to him, 
for she had clothed his ardent soul with so puny a body 
that at thirty he was mistaken for thirteen, and full-grown 
men, judging him from his undersized frame and high 
piping voice to be a schoolboy, would pat him kindly on 
the shoulder and address him as " my lad." 2 This kind of 
humiliation had inspired him with a grudge against 
society; at the same time it would be unjust not to give 
him credit for a genuine and disinterested sympathy with 
the cause of the workers. His Organisation du travail 
breathes throughout a spirit of sincerity which offers a 
striking contrast to the cynical utterances of most modern 
Socialist writers, whose indictments of working-class 
grievances, like the harrowing details of bodily ills retailed 
in advertisements of quack medicines, seem to be actuated 
solely by the determination to sell the advertiser's panacea. 
Louis Blanc, obsessed with the worker's lot, unhappily 
allowed himself to fall a victim to that agony of pity which 
verges on neurasthenia. 

1 Louis Blanc, V Organisation du travail, p. 20. 

2 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 116; Daniel Stern, La Revolution de 
1848, ii. 43. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 113 

Many sensitive natures brought in contact with the 
miseries of life have suffered from this tendency. Lord 
Shaftesbury, overwhelmed at times with the hopelessness 
of his task, knew these black moments of despair, but 
battled with them as a weakness that must not be allowed 
to sap his energies. The error of Louis' Blanc, as of the 
Russian fanatics who came after him, was to give unbridled 
rein to morbid imaginings. To his clouded vision a poor 
man is necessarily a miserable man, all the conditions of 
his life are unbearable; of contentment combined with 
frugality he has no conception — the mason whistling as 
he goes to work, the fisherman singing as he puts out to sea, 
the country labourer tossing his rosy baby in his cottage 
garden do not exist for him. As long as some one possesses 
more than he does, a man must necessarily be miserable. 
This distorted view of the ills of life, combined with an 
exaggerated conception of his power to cure them, was the 
cause of Louis Blanc's subsequent failure and bitter dis- 
illusionment. 

Quite a different type of Socialist was the genial " Papa 
Cabet," — a " faux bonkomme" says Thureau-Dangin, for 
Cabet was a born autocrat. The son of a barrel-maker, 
fitienne Cabet first saw the light at Dijon in 1788, and in 
1834 went to England, where he became a convert to the 
ideas of Robert Owen. 

After his return to France in 1839 Cabet sketched out 
his plan of a Communist settlement, modelled on Sir 
Thomas More's Utopia, in his Voyage en Icarie, and in the 
same year, 1840, published his great work on the French 
Revolution, showing the course of Communistic theories 
throughout the movement. 1 These ideas, which Cabet 
traces from Plato, Protagoras, the Essenians of Judea, 
More, Campanella, Locke, to Montesquieu, Mably, 
Rousseau, and other philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, formed, as we have shown in an earlier quotation 
from Cabet 's work, the policy of Robespierre and, in a 
lesser degree, of Condorcet, Clootz, Hebert, and Chau- 
mette. But it is above all Babeuf whom Cabet rightly 
regards as the principal exponent of Communism, and in 

1 Histoire populaire de la Revolution Franqaise, in four vols. 



114 WORLD REVOLUTION 

this connection he provides an interesting explanation of 
a subterfuge employed in nearly all histories of Socialism. 
Now, as every one knows, the word Socialism had not 
come into use at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
and its doctrines were classified under such generic head- 
ings as " Babouvisme," " Saint-Simonisme," " Fourier- 
isme," etc. It was not until about 1848 that " Socialism " 
began to be employed as a comprehensive term embracing 
all these variations on the same theme. 1 Nevertheless, it is 
customary to describe Socialism as originating with Robert 
Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier. Why? Since none of 
these men called themselves Socialists, and Saint-Simon 
died twenty years before the word was invented, there 
seems no more reason to include them under the term than 
their predecessors of the eighteenth century from whom 
they took their theories. To the attentive student of social 
history it seems obvious that histories of Socialism, after 
tracing its origins in antiquity and in the doctrines of the 
French philosophers, should begin their account of the 
movement with its earliest exponents in the French 
Revolution. Why so resolutely dissociate Socialism, or 
its equivalent Communism, from Robespierre and Babeuf ? 
Cabet answers this pertinent inquiry with a question : 

Why, in order to represent a doctrine that one believes to be 
the most beautiful and the most perfect, choose a man (Babeuf) 
who was perhaps not quite perfect, and whose life, attacked by 
a party of the patriots (i.e. revolutionaries) themselves, may at 
least furnish pretexts for attacks from the adversaries of com- 
munity ? Why choose a proscribed name of which all the enemies 
of the people have made a bugbear? To transform Communism 
into Babouvisme is it not to fall into a trap and obligingly 
increase difficulties already so great? For the same reason 
... we have considered it a mistake to invoke the name of 
Robespierre just as Bodson blamed Babeuf for invoking the 
name of this martyr. . . . 2 

Yes, decidedly for the credit of Communism it is better 
to keep Robespierre and Babeuf dark and to date the 

1 Malon (Histoire du socialisme, i. 31) says the word was first used in 
this sense by Pierre Leroux in 1848 in contra-distinction to Individualism, 
but Daniel Stern, La Revolution de 1848, i. 33, says it was not current till 
after this date. The verb " to socialize " had, however, as we shall see a 
few pages further on, been coined twelve years earlier. 

2 Cabet, Histoire populaire, etc., iv. 331. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 115 

origins of Socialism from the teachings of such amiable 
visionaries as Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier! The 
admission is certainly naive! 

Cabet himself was a theorist of the same pacific order, 
and, although expressing his firm belief in the practi- 
cability of Communism despite its repeated failures in the 
past, declared: 

But we are profoundly convinced at the same time that a 
minority cannot establish it by violence, that it can only be 
realized by the power of public opinion, and that far from hasten- 
ing its realization violence can only retard it. We think that 
one should profit by the lessons of history, that as Babeuf and 
his companions foresaw — (did they foresee it ?) — their con- 
spiracy was the final blow to democracy. We find it dead under 
the Directory, under the Consulate, under the Empire, and 
under the Restoration. 1 

Would that our so-called " advanced thinkers " of to-day 
would recognize the wisdom of this reflection! 

It was therefore in a perfectly pacific spirit that Cabet 
gathered around him a circle of enthusiasts calling them- 
selves Icarians, all profoundly imbued with the Babouviste 
tradition and eager, under the guidance of its latest expo- 
nent, to put it into practice. Realizing that materialism was 
a doctrine that would never make a popular appeal, Cabet 
followed the precedent of Weishaupt by declaring: " The 
present Communists are the disciples, the imitators, the 
continuers of Jesus Christ. Therefore respect a doctrine 
preached by Jesus Christ. Examine it. Study it." 2 

The old maxim of the Babouvistes was again adopted 
by the community: ''From every one according to his 
strength, to every one according to his needs " (De chacun 
selon ses forces, a chacun selon ses besoins). 3 

In 1847 Cabet judged that the moment had come to 
carry his great scheme into execution, and on February the 
3rd of the following year a band of sixty-nine enthusiastic 
Icarians started forth for Texas, where they eagerly set to 
work at clearing the ground for a settlement. Unfortu- 
nately they had selected a malarial district, a great number 
of the colonists were struck down by fever, the only doctor 

1 Cabet, op. cit. i. 334. -jf»v»-»ity 

* Malon, Histoire du socialisme, ii. 172. » Ibid. ii. 165. 



116 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of the party went mad, and several of the sick died for 
want of medical aid. 1 Accordingly the community decided 
to abandon the few miserable huts they had succeeded in 
erecting and to migrate to another part of the country. 

The procession, divided into three columns, set forth on 
a tragic retreat from Texas to New Orleans, where they 
were joined by Cabet himself and about 200 more Icarians, 
and under his leadership moved on to the old Mormon 
town of Nauvoo in Illinois, where they finally settled in 
March 1849. Soon after this Cabet was recalled to France 
in order to defend himself in a lawsuit brought against him 
by some of the Icarians he had left behind, who accused 
him of appropriating 200,000 francs of their funds. 2 The 
court ended by acquitting him, and Cabet was able to 
return to Nauvoo, which was now prospering, for this time 
the colonists, finding ready-made houses awaiting them, 
were able to embark at once on various communal enter- 
prises. Farms and workshops sprang up, also a distillery, 
a theatre, a school for the children. For five years all went 
well and by 1855 the colonists had increased to over 500 
people. Communism seemed solidly established at last. 
But once again the inevitable occurred, for the history of 
Communist settlements is painfully monotonous in its 
reiteration, and in Nauvoo, as earlier in New Harmony, 
later in New Australia, the autocratic spirit of the leader 
began to make itself felt. Cabet indeed had, as Malon the 
Socialist observes, " such a hatred for every instinct of 
liberty " that he forbade the workers to have tobacco or 
brandy or even to speak during working-hours. 3 

Nauvoo had in fact become an absolute monarchy, for 
no one but Cabet was allowed to have any voice in public 
affairs. Not unnaturally the community revolted, and in 
1856 organized a ballot which deprived Cabet of his leader- 
ship by a majority of votes. The dethroned monarch left 
Nauvoo, followed by the faithful minority of 200, but died 
— according to Larousse — of grief, 4 the same year, at 
St. Louis. The remainder of the Icarians now migrated 
from Nauvoo to Iowa, and in spite of continued dissensions 

1 Malon, Histoire du socialisme, ii. 174-175. 
2 La Grande Encyclopedie, article on " Cabet." 3 Malon, ii. 176. 
4 Dictionnaire Larousse, article on " Cabet." 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 117 

struggled on without a further break-up until 1879, when 
their number was reduced to fifty-two. By this time, how- 
ever, the exalted ideals with which they had embarked on 
the enterprise were almost forgotten, only a few of the old 
men retained something of their earlier Communistic 
ardour, which enthusiastic visitors from time to time fanned 
again into flame; the young men meanwhile grew up 
impatient at the arrest of all progress, and ended by form- 
ing themselves into a hostile camp of Progressives in oppo- 
sition to the " Non-Progressives," who clung to the old 
order. 1 This scission led up to a definite rupture in 1879, 
when twenty-eight members left the colony and the 
remaining twenty-four struggled on painfully until their 
final extinction in 1888. 

So ended one more attempt to put Communism into 
practice. By the middle of the last century, indeed, every 
form of Socialism which we hear proclaimed to-day as the 
last word in modern thought had already been propounded 
if not put to the test. 

Space forbids the enumeration of the countless theorists 
— Desamy, Raspail, Talandier, Auguste Comte, and many 
others — who filled those years with the noise of their 
declamations on the regeneration of society. Those who 
care to plunge into this sea of words — and words — and 
words — all more or less rearrangements of the same old 
formulas and phrases — can do so in the pages of Malon's 
vast Histoire du socialisme, where they will find every con- 
ceivable variation of the Socialist theme set forth with a 
bewildering wealth of detail. They will then find that the 
French Socialists of 1825 to 1848 had anticipated all the 
theories of modern Socialism, which are habitually attrib- 
uted to the Social Democrats of Germany. Thus as early 
as 1836 an obscure writer named Pecqueur had already 
coined the word to " socialize," so dear to the heart of the 
modern Bolshevik, and in 1838 published a treatise named 
Des inter its du commerce, de l' Industrie et de V agriculture et 
de la civilisation en general, etc., in which he proposed that 
all banks, mines, railways, and by degrees all great indus- 
tries, should be socialized: " In social economy the true 

1 Malon, op. cit. pp. 179-182. 



118 WORLD REVOLUTION 

good will be the progressive socialization of the sources of 
all riches, of instruments of work, of the conditions of 
general welfare." 1 

Again: " Capital must end by being entirely social, and 
each person must always receive a part of the produce 
according to his time of work." 2 

A little later Vidal took up the same theme, specializing 
on the theory that Marx was later to make famous under 
the name of wage-slavery. In his book Vivre en travaillant, 
published in 1848, Vidal, following in the footsteps of 
Pecqueur, demanded the " socialization of the land " and 
the " socialization of capitals," which was to lead to " col- 
lective capital " 5 — in other words, Communism tricked 
out in fresh phrases. 

How is it that, in spite of continued failures, the idea of 
Communism persisted all through this period? M. 
Thureau-Dangin no doubt rightly attributes it to the 
Babouviste tradition, which he shows to have continued 
right up to the end of the century, and indeed we may say 
to the present moment : 

In studying Fourierisme, Saint-Simonisme, and the other 
schools deriving from them that called themselves pacific we 
have found one of the origins of revolutionary socialism. This 
origin is not the only one. There is another, which, whilst less 
apparent, can nevertheless be recognized, and for this we must 
go back to Gracchus Babeuf, who, under the Directory, loudly 
preached the abolition of property, and the dividing up of all 
lands and all riches. This affiliation has escaped the attention 
of most contemporaries, but to-day we have the proof that from 
the " Equals " of 1796 to the Socialists at the end of the Mon- 
archy of July (i.e. the monarchy of Louis Philippe) the tradition 
was continued without interruption. One man was found in 
fact to receive it from the hands of Babeuf, to preserve it with 
a sort of savage piety and transmit it to new generations : this 
was Buonarotti d 

It was Buonarotti who in 1828 published the History of 
the Conspiracy of the Equals (quoted in the last chapter of 
this book,) which was for ten years "the gospel of the 
French proletariat " studied in all the workshops, so that 

1 Malon, Histoire du socialisme, ii. 205. 2 Ibid. p. 206. 

» Ibid. ii. p. 197. 4 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 106-108. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 119 

the working-men became infected with Babouvisme. * 

But in tracing this propaganda to Buonarotti' s Babou- 
vistic fervour M. Thureau-Dangin stops short of the truth 
and it is Malon who supplies the real explanation to the 
persistence of Communist tradition. Babeuf, it will be 
remembered, was an Illuminatus acting, according to his 
own confession, under orders from invisible chiefs, and it 
was by these same agencies that the work he had begun was 
carried on. " The idea of community (i.e. Communism),' ' 
says Malon, " had been transmitted in the dark through the 
secret societies " 2 and elsewhere he adds that Buonarotti 
had " inspired nearly all the secret societies during the first 
thirty-five years of the century." 3 

It is therefore not only as the coadjutor of Babeuf, but 
as the adept of Illuminism, that Buonarotti must be 
regarded. 

But whilst Communism under the various forms de- 
scribed above continued its course through the succeeding 
groups of revolutionary Socialists, Illuminism had devel- 
oped along another line more in conformity with its original 
purpose, namely, Anarchy. Of this creed Proudhon had 
become the chief exponent. Hitherto, although anarchic 
doctrines had been freely preached by Marat, Clootz, and 
Hebert, the appellation of " Anarchist " had been claimed 
by no one, but remained a term of opprobrium which even 
an enrage of 1793 would have indignantly resented. It 
was left to Proudhon to adopt the name of Anarchy (i.e. 
without government) as the profession of a political faith in 
contradistinction to Communism. 4 

The difference between the two systems must be clearly 
understood if we are to follow the conflicts that marked 
the course of the revolutionary movement from this 
moment onwards. 

Briefly then, whilst Communism declares that all land, 
wealth, and property must be taken out of private hands 
and placed under the control of the State, Anarchy 
advocates precisely the opposite principle, the complete 
abolition of the State and the seizure of wealth by the 

1 Malon op. cit. ii. 147. 2 Ibid. p. 163. * Ibid. p. 147. 

* Thureau-Dangin, op. cit vi. 132. 



120 WORLD REVOLUTION 

people. f'Qhce again we come back to the old masonic 
formula — Liberty and Equality. Communism, which is 
the application of the principle of absolute Equality, 
regards humanity only in the mass, and would cut all men 
down to one dead level; Anarchy, which proclaims com- 
plete Liberty, would leave every man free to live as he 
pleases, to do as he will with his own, to rob or to murder. 
The former is rigid bureaucracy ; the latter, Individualism 
run mad. 

Now it is obvious that between the two creeds there 
can be no understanding, that indeed they are more 
opposed to each other than either is opposed to the existing 
social system. For under the constitutional governments 
enjoyed by all civilized countries to-day a certain degree of 
both Liberty and Equality prevails, and so, in England at 
any rate, our form of government may be said to represent 
the happy mean between two principles which, if pushed 
to extremes, must remain for ever irreconcilable. 

It was thus that the masonic formula, after leading 
mankind into the morass of revolution, from the middle of 
the nineteenth century onwards divided the revolutionary 
forces into the two hostile camps indicated in the chart 
accompanying this book under the parallel columns of 
Socialism and Anarchy. This rift, which had first made 
itself felt in 1794 when Robespierre turned on the Anar- 
chists who had paved his way to power, now with the 
advent of Proudhon opened out never to close again. The 
rest of the history of world revolution up to the present day 
largely consists in the war between the State Socialists 
and Anarchists, whose bitter hatred of each other exceeds 
even the hatred of either for the " Capitalist system " both 
are eager to destroy. 

By Proudhon, surnamed by Kropotkine " the Father 
of Anarchy," * this hatred was, above all, logically directed 
against Robespierre, the Father of State Socialism, and 
expressed in no mild terms : 

1 " They have reproached me with being the Father of Anarchy. 
They wish to do me too much honour. The Father of Anarchy is the 
immortal Proudhon, who propounded it for the first time in 1848." — 
Kropotkine before the Cour d'Appel of Lyon, Proces des anarchistes (1883), 
p. 100. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 121 

All the runners after popularity, mountebanks of the revolu- 
tion, have taken for their oracle Robespierre, the eternal denun- 
ciator, with the empty brain, the serpent's tooth. . . . Ah! I 
know him too well, this reptile, I have felt too well the wriggling 
of his tail, to spare in him the secret vice of democrats, the cor- 
rupting ferment of every Republic — Envy. 1 

For the nineteenth-century devotees of Robespierre, 
Proudhon had nothing but loathing and contempt, and 
therefore during the years preceding the 1848 revolution 
occupied an almost isolated position. " I am neither a 
Saint-Simonien, nor a Fourieriste, nor a Babouviste," he 
wrote in 1840; and again: " I have no desire to increase 
the number of these madmen." The system of Fourier he 
described as the " last dream of debauchery in delirium "; 
Louis Blanc was " the most ignorant, the vainest, the 
emptiest, the most impudent and nauseous of declaimers." 
" Far from me then, Communists! " he cries, " yotir pres- 
ence stinks in my nostrils, the sight of you disgusts me." 2 

The only point in which Proudhon found himself in 
accord with the Socialists was in his declamations against 
property, and in this be believed himself to be entirely 
original. " Property," he declared, " is theft! It is not 
once in a thousand years that such a saying is made. I 
have no other treasure on earth except this definition of 
property, but I hold it more precious than the millions of 
Rothschild! " 

Unhappily Proudhon's treasure was not his own, for 
he had borrowed it almost verbatim from Brissot, who in 
1780 had written: " Exclusive property is a theft in 
Nature. The thief, in the natural state, is the rich man." 3 
Moreover Brissot himself had not originated the idea, 
which may be found in the writings of both Weishaupt 
and Rousseau. So much for Proudhon's one cherished 
possession. 

In his blasphemies likewise Proudhon had not even the 
merit of originality, for we seem to hear " the personal 
enemy of Jesus Christ," Anacharsis Clootz, in such phrases 

1 P. J. Proudhon, Idee generate de la revolution au XlXieme silcU 
(1851), pp. 188, 189. 

2 Thureau-Dangin, La Monarchie de Juillet, vi. 128. 

* Recherches philosophiques sur le d v oit de propriete et le vol? 



122 WORLD REVOLUTION 

as these: "God — that is folly and cowardice; God is 
tyranny and misery; God is Evil." * And going one step 
further he cries: "To me then Lucifer, Satan! whoever 
you may be, the demon that the faith of my fathers 
opposed to God and the Church." 2 

It is Proudhon, racked with a demon of hatred, bitter- 
ness, and revenge, in whom the devastating fire of world 
revolution is incarnated, a devil that drives him from the 
company of his fellow-men to dwell like the Gadarene 
demoniac in the wilderness. 

One man there was who sought out Proudhon in his 
savage isolation, Michel Bakunin, — the first of that band 
of Russians later to be known by the name adopted by 
Proudhon, that of " Anarchist " — and often before the 
outbreak of 1848 these two would sit far into the night dis- 
cussing the world revolution that was to overthrow the 
existing order. Proudhon's resolution: " I shall arm 
myself to the teeth against civilization ; I shall begin a war 
that will end only with my life! " 3 may be regarded as the 
battle-cry of the party led later on by Bakunin surnamed 
" the genius of destruction." 

But neither Anarchists nor Socialists could alone have 
availed to bring about the revolutionary outbreaks that 
marked the first half of the nineteenth century; theory, 
however violent, must ever prove powerless to put in 
motion the concrete machinery needed for the subversion 
of law and order, and as in the first French Revolution it 
was the Secret Societies that provided the real driving 
force behind the movement. 

It is possible that some of the leaders of thought during 
that period, known as " the dawn of Socialism," remained 
unconscious of the secret influence behind them; others, 
however wittingly, co-operated with them. Buonarotti, as 
we have seen, was one of the principal leaders of the Secret 
Societies; Saint-Simon and Bazard " consulted Nubius as 
a Delphic oracle." Mazzini, professing Christian and 
patriot though he was, had joined the ranks of the Car- 

1 Thureau-Dangin, op. cit. vi. 139. 

8 Proudhon, La Revolution au XlXitme si$cle, p. 290. 

8 Thureau-Dangin, op. cii, vi. 127. 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 123 

bonari, where his activities merely excited the derision of 
the Haute Vente. For the methods of the Carbonari were 
not those of the Haute Vente, which held that the mind 
rather than the body should be the point of attack. 

" The murders of which our people render themselves guilty 
in France, Switzerland, and also in Italy," writes Vindex to 
Nubius, " are for us a shame and a remorse ... we are too 
advanced to content ourselves with such means. . . . Our pred- 
ecessors in Carbonarism did not understand their power. It 
is not in the blood of an isolated man or even of a traitor that it 
must be exercised; it is on the masses. . . . Let us . . . never 
cease to corrupt. Tertullian was right in saying that the blood 
of martyrs was the seed of Christians ... do not let us make 
martyrs, but let us popularise vice amongst the multitudes. 
Let them breathe it in by their five senses, let them drink it, 
let them be saturated in it. . . . Make vicious hearts and you 
will have no more Catholics. Keep the priest away from labour, 
from the altar, from virtue. . . . Make him lazy, and gourmand. 
. . . You will thus have a thousand times better accomplished 
your task than if you had blunted the point of your stiletto 
upon the bones of some poor wretches. . . . 

"It is corruption en masse that we have undertaken; the 
corruption of the people by the clergy and the corruption of the 
clergy by ourselves, the corruption that ought one day to put 
the Church in her tomb. The best dagger with which to strike 
the Church is corruption. To the work, then, even to the very 
end." l 

It was thus that Mazzini excited the derision of the 
Haute Vente, for, as Nubius writing to " Beppo " on April 
7, 1836, observed: 

You know that Mazzini has judged himself worthy to 
co-operate with us as in the grandest work of our day. The 
Vente Supreme has not decided thus. Mazzini behaves too 
much like a conspirator of melodrama to suit the obscure role 
we resign ourselves to play until our triumph. Mazzini likes 
to talk about a great many things, about himself above all. He 
never ceases writing that he is overthrowing thrones and altars, 
that he fertilizes the peoples, that he is the prophet of human- 
itarianism, etc., etc., and all that reduces itself to a few miserable 
defeats or to assassinations so vulgar that I should send away 
one of my lacqueys if he permitted himself to get rid of one of 
my enemies by such shameful means. Mazzini is a demigod to 
fools before whom he tries to get himself proclaimed the pontiff 
of fraternity of which he will be the Italian god. ... In the 
1 Cr£tineau-Joly, ii. 147. 



124 WORLD REVOLUTION 

sphere where he acts this poor Joseph is only ridiculous; in order 
to be a complete wild beast, he will always want for claws. He 
is the bourgeois gentilhomme of the Secret Societies. . . } 

Mazzini on his part suspected that secrets were being 
kept from him by the chiefs of the Haute Vente, and 
Malegari, assailed by the same fears, wrote from London 
in 1835 to Dr. Breidenstein these significant words: 

We form an association of brothers in all points of the globe, 
we have desires and interests in common, we aim at the eman- 
cipation of humanity, we wish to break every kind of yoke, yet 
there is one that is unseen, that can hardly be felt, yet that 
weighs on us. Whence comes it? Where is it? No one knows, or 
at least no one tells. The association is secret, even for us, the 
veterans of secret societies. 

Not only amongst the revolutionary leaders but in the 
industrial centres a new and mysterious power was making 
itself felt — the tyranny of Trade Unionism. Strikes not 
to be explained by the existing industrial grievances broke 
out continually in Scotland and the manufacturing towns 
in the North of England during those years of 1834 to 1860 
and were conducted with a ferocity hitherto unknown in 
the history of the working-classes; men who would not 
co-operate were not merely boycotted but murdered, their 
houses burnt down and their wives and children driven 
half -clad into the streets at midnight. 2 These outrages 
reached their height in 1859 and at Sheffield continued for 
fifteen years. In Manchester the brickmakers' hands were 
pierced and maimed by needles mixed in the clay they 
handled. 3 

It would be absurd to attribute such methods to honest 
Trade Union leaders animated solely by an ardent or even 
a fanatical desire to improve the workers' lot. A number of 
these men indeed came forward to deny complicity and 
in some cases offered a reward for the detection of the 
criminals.* : Vv;-, : . ^, .- ■ 

1 Cretineau-Joly, op. cit. ii. 145. 

2 Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 224. 

3 Justin McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times, iv. 152. 

4 Ibid. See the trial of the leaders by the Commission that sat in 
Sheffield in June 1867, reported in the Annual Register for that year. 
Note the references to " the mandates of the secret tribunals " and the 
descriptions of the terror displayed by the witnesses when questioned on 
this point. ' . 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM 125 

The truth is clear that Illuminism, following its usual 
course of insinuating itself into every organization framed 
for the benefit of humanity, and turning it to an exactly 
opposite purpose, was using Trade Unionism, which had 
been designed to liberate the workers, for their complete 
enslavement. 

In the minds of contemporaries no doubt exists that a 
hidden and malevolent agency was at work. Alison, 
writing in 1847 of the despotism exercised by the " ruthless 
trade unions " in condemning thousands of people " to 
compulsory idleness and real destitution," adds: 

Nearly the whole of the loss arising from these strikes fell on 
the innocent and industrious labourers, willing and anxious to 
work, but deterred from doing so by the threats of the unions, 
and the dark menaces of an unknown committee. The mode in 
which these committees acquire such despotic authority is pre- 
cisely the same as that which made the Committee of Public 
Safety despotic. Terror — terror — terror " l ^ 

Justin M'Carthy in his history of the same period con- 
firms this assertion: ' 

It began to be common talk that among the trades associa- 
tions there was systematic terrorizing of the worst kind, and 
that a Vehmgericht more secret and more grim than any known to 
the middle ages was issuing its sentences in many of our great 
industrial communities. 2 

So Socialist leaders and working-men alike played the 
part of helpless puppets pulled by wires from behind, held 
in the hands of their sinister directors. 

We shall now see how the course of world revolution 
coincided with the activities of these same secret agencies. 

1 Alison's History of Europe, i. 255. 

* Justin M'Carthy, A History of Our Own Times, iv. 152. 



CHAPTER V 

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 

Russian Secret Societies — The Dekabrist rising — The French Revolution 
of 1830 — The bourgeoisie before 1848 — The Secret Societies — 
Apathy of the Government — The outbreak of February — Fall of 
the Monarchy — The Social Democratic Republic — National work- 
shops — Associations of working-men — The 17th of March — The 
16th of April — The 15th of May — The days of June — Reaction 
— The European conflagration. 

The first visible result of the work of the Secret Societies 
in the nineteenth century occurred in Russia, whither the 
doctrines of illuminized freemasonry had been carried by 
Napoleon's armies and by Russian officers who had trav- 
elled in Germany. 1 It was owing to the intrigues of these 
societies that the band of true reformers calling themselves 
" The Association of Welfare " was dissolved and two new 
parties were formed, the first known as the Northern Asso- 
ciation demanding constitutional monarchy, the second 
called the Southern Association under Colonel Pestel, who 
was in direct communication with Nubius — which aimed 
not only at a Republic but at the extermination of the 
whole royal family. 2 Many attempts indeed were made on 
the life of Alexander I. through the agency of the Secret 
Societies, 3 and after his death in 1825 an insurrection broke 
out, led by the " United Slavs " who were connected with 
the Southern Association and the Polish Secret Societies at 
Warsaw. 4 The pretext for this outbreak, known as " The 

1 La Russie en 1839, by Astolphe de Custine, ii. 42; The Court of Russia 
in the Nineteenth Century, by E. A. Bray ley Hodgetts, i. 116. 

2 The Revolutionary Movement in Russia, by Konni Zilliacus, p. 8; 
Brayley Hodgetts, op. cit. i. 122. 

3 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 242; Frost's Secret Societies, ii. 213. 

4 Zilliacus, op. cit.; Brayley Hodgetts, op. cit. i. 123. 

126 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 127 

Dekabrist rising " because it occurred in December, was 
the accession to the throne of Nicholas I. at the request of 
his elder brother Constant ine, and a crowd of mutinying 
soldiers were persuaded to march on the Winter Palace and 
protest against the acceptance of the crown by Nicholas, 
represented to them by the agitators as an act of usurpa- 
tion. The manner in which the movement was engineered 
has been described by the Marquis de Custine, who trav- 
elled in Russia a few years later: 

Well-informed people have attributed this riot to the influ- 
ence of the Secret Societies by which Russia is worked. . . . 
The method that the conspirators had employed to rouse the 
army was a ridiculous lie: the rumour had been spread that 
Nicholas was usurping the throne from his brother Constantine, 
who, they said, was advancing on Petersburg to defend his 
rights by armed force. This is the means they took in order to 
decide the revolutionaries to cry under the windows of the 
Palace: " Long live the Constitution!" The leaders had per- 
suaded them that this word Constitution was the name of the 
wife of Constantine, their supposed Empress. You see that an 
idea of duty was at the bottom of the soldiers' hearts, since 
they could only be led into rebellion by a trick. 1 

This strange incident tends to confirm the assertion of 
Pere Deschamps that the word " Constitution " was the 
signal agreed on by the Secret Societies for an outbreak 
of revolution. It had been employed in the same manner 
in France in 1791, and, as we shall see, it was employed 
again in Russia at intervals throughout the revolutionary 
movement. 

The Dekabrist rising was ended by three rounds of 
grape-shot, and five of the ringleaders were hanged. In 
no sense was it a popular insurrection, in fact the people 
regarded it with strong disapproval as an act of sacrilege, 
and so little did it aid the cause of liberty that General 
Levashoff declared to Prince Troubetzkoy " it had thrown 
back Pussia fifty years." 2 

Further evidence of the connection between the French 
Revolution and the engineering of revolution in Russia is 
supplied by de Custine on his travels in the latter country 

x De Custine, op. cit. ii. 42; Brayley Hodgetts, op. cit. i. 192. 
2 Brayley Hodgetts, op. cit. i. 201, 205. 



128 WORLD REVOLUTION 

fourteen years later. Now in those days before the aboli- 
tion of serfdom, the peasants on an estate were bought and 
sold with the land, and since the Emperor's serfs were the 
best treated in the whole country the inhabitants of estates 
newly acquired by the Crown became the objects of envy 
to their fellow-serfs. In this year of 1839 the peasants, 
hearing that the Emperor had just bought some more land, 
sent a deputation to Petersburg, consisting of representa- 
tives from all parts of Russia, to petition that the districts 
from which they came should also be added to the royal 
domains. 

Nicholas I. received them kindly, for whilst adopting 
repressive measures towards insurrection his sympathies 
were with the people. We must not forget that it was he 
who visited Robert Owen at New Lanark to study his 
schemes of social reform. When, therefore, the peasants 
petitioned him to buy them he answered with great gentle- 
ness that he regretted he could not buy up all Russia, but 
he added: " I hope that the time will come when every 
peasant of this Empire will be free ; if it only depended on 
me Russians would enjoy from to-day the independence 
that I wish for them and that I am working with all my 
might to procure for them in the future." 

These words, interpreted to the serfs by " savage and 
envious men," led to the most terrible outbreak of violence 
all along the Volga. " The Father wishes for our deliver- 
ance," cried the deluded deputies on their return to their 
homes, " he only wishes for our happiness, he told us so 
himself; it is therefore the seigneurs and their overseers 
who are our enemies and oppose the good designs of the 
Father! Let us avenge ourselves! Let us avenge the 
Emperor." 

And forthwith the peasants, imagining they were 
carrying out the Emperor's intention, threw themselves 
upon the seigneurs and their overseers, roasted them alive, 
boiled others in coppers, disembowelled the delegates, put 
everything to fire and sword and devastated the whole 
province. 1 

Now when we compare this incident with the " Great 

1 La Russie en 1839, ii. 219-220. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 129 

Fear " that took place in France precisely fifty years 
earlier (i.e. in July 1789) how can we doubt the connection 
between the two ? In both the pretext and the organization 
are identical. The benevolent intentions of Louis XVI., 
interpreted by the emissaries to the provinces in the words, 
-" The King desires you to burn down the chateaux; he 
only wishes to keep his own"; the placards paraded 
through the towns, headed " Edict of the King," ordering 
the peasants to burn and destroy, and the massacres and 
burnings that followed — all this was exactly repeated in 
Russia fifty years later quite obviously by the same 
organization that had engineered the earlier outbreak. 
How otherwise are we to explain it ? 

Five years after the Russian explosion of 1825 the 
second French Revolution took place, which, however, 
hardly enters into the scope of this book. The revolution 
of 1830 was in the main not a social but a political revolu- 
tion, a renewed attempt of the Orleaniste conspiracy to 
effect a change of dynasty and as such formed a mere 
corollary to the insurrections of July and October 1789. 
It is true that beneath the tumults of 1830, as beneath the 
Siege of the Bastille and the march on Versailles, the sub- 
versive force of Illuminism made itself felt, and that during 
" the glorious days of July " the hatred of Christianity 
expressed by the Terror broke out again in the sacking of 
the " Archeveche," in the pillage and desecration of the 
churches, and in the attacks on religion in the provinces. 
But the driving force behind the revolution that precipi- 
tated Charles X. from the throne was not Socialist but 
Orleaniste; it was a movement led by the tricouleur of 
July 13, 1789, not by the red flag of August 10, 1792, 
emblem of the social revolution ; its strength lay not with 
the workmen but with the bourgeoisie, and it was the 
bourgeoisie who triumphed. 

The regime that followed has well been named " the 
bourgeois monarchy." For Louis Philippe, once the ardent 
partisan of revolution, followed the usual programme of 
demagogy, and as soon as the reins of power were in his 
hands turned a deaf ear to the demands of the people. It 
was thus that in 1848, organized by the Secret Societies, 



«r 



130 WORLD REVOLUTION 

directed by the Socialists, executed by the working-men 
and aggravated by the intractable attitude of the King and 
his ministers, the second great outbreak of World Revolu- 
tion took place. 

There was then, just as in the first French Revolution, 
real grievances that rankled in the minds of the people; 
electoral reform, the adjustment of wages and hours of 
labour, and particularly the burning question of unem- 
ployment, were all matters that demanded immediate 
attention. The people in 1848 even more than in 1789 had 
good cause for complaint. 

But in justice to the bourgeoisie it must be recognized 
that they were in the main sympathetic to the cause of the 
workers. " Bourgeois opinion," even the Socialist Malon 
admits, " was . . . open to renovating conceptions. 
Before 1848 the French bourgeoisie had as yet no fear of 
social insurrections; they readily allowed themselves to 
indulge in innocent Socialist speculations. It was thus that 
Fourierisme, for example, founded entirely on seeking the 
greatest sum of happiness possible, had numerous sym- 
pathizers in the provincial bourgeoisie." * 

Like the aristocrats of 1788 who had voluntarily offered 
to surrender their pecuniary privileges, and on the famous 
4th of August 1789 themselves dealt the death-blow to the 
feudal system by renouncing all other rights and privileges, 
so the bourgeoisie of 1848 showed their willingness to co- 
operate notjmerely with reforms but with the most drastic 
social changes directly opposed to their own interests. 

" In the first weeks of 1848," Malon says again, " it was not 
only the proletarians who spoke of profound social reforms; 
the bourgeoisie that Fourieriste propaganda (but above all the 
novels of Eugene Sue and of George Sand) had almost reconciled 
with Socialism, thought themselves the hour had come, and all 
the candidates talked of ameliorating the lot of the people, of 
realizing social democracy, of abolishing misery. Great pro- 
prietors believed that the Provisional Government was com- 
posed of Communists, and one day twenty of them came to 
offer Gamier Pages to give up their goods to the community." 2 

But the art of the revolutionaries has always been to 
check reforms by alienating the sympathies of the class in 
1 Malon, Histoire du socialisme, ii/295. 2 Ibid, ii. 520. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 131 

power, and they had no intention of allowing the people to 
be contented by pacific measures or to look to any one but 
themselves for salvation. 

As on the eve of all great public commotions, a great 
masonic congress was held in 1847. 1 Amongst the French 
masons present were the men who played the leading parts 
in the subsequent revolution — Louis Blanc, Caussidiere, 
Cremieux, Ledru Rollin, etc., and it was then decided to 
enlist the Swiss Cantons in the movement so that the 
centre of Europe should form no barrier against the tide. 

It was by the Secret Societies that the plan of cam- 
paign was drawn up and the revolutionary machine set in 
motion. Caussidiere, a prominent member of these asso- 
ciations, and at the same time Prefect of Police in Paris 
during the tumults of 1848, has himself provided us with 
the clearest evidence on this point. 

"The Secret Societies," he writes, "had never ceased to 
exist even after the set-back of May 12, 1838. This freemasonry 
of devoted soldiers had been maintained without new affiliations 
until 1846. The orders of the day, printed in Brussels or some- 
times in secret by compositors of Paris, had kept up its zeal. 
But the frequency of these proclamations, which fell sooner or 
later into the hands of the police, rendered the use of them very 
dangerous. Relations between the affiliated and the leaders had 
thus become rather restricted when, in 1846, the Secret Societies 
were reorganized and took up some initiative again. Paris was 
the centre around which radiated the different ramifications 
extending into the provincial towns. In Paris and in the prov- 
inces the same sentiment inspired all these militant phalanxes, 
more preoccupied by revolutionary action than by social the- 
ories. Guns were more talked of than Communism, and the 
only formula unanimously accepted was Robespierre's 'Declara- 
tion of the Rights of Man.' The Secret Societies found their 
real strength in the heart of the people of the working-classes, 
which thus had its vanguard, a certain disciplined force always 
ready to act, their co-operation was never wanting to any 
political emotion and they were found in the forefront of the 
barricades in February." * 

But the working-classes were not admitted to the inner 
councils of the leaders; the place of the vanguard was on 

1 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 281, quoting Gyr, La Franc-Magonnerie, p. 368, 
and also Eckert. 

2 Memoires de Caussidiere, i. 38, 39. 



132 WORLD REVOLUTION 

the barricades when the shooting began, not in the meet- 
ings where the plan of campaign was drawn up. 

Amongst these secret agencies the Haute Vente nat- 
urally played the leading part, and two years before the 
revolution broke out Piccolo Tigre was able to congratulate 
himself on the complete success of his efforts to bring about 
a vast upheaval. 

On the 5th of January 1846 the energetic agent of 
Nubius writes in these hopeful terms to his chief: 

The journey that I have just accomplished in Europe has 
been as fortunate and as productive as we had hoped. Hence- 
forth nothing remains but to put our hand to theftask in order 
to reach the denouement of the comedy. . . . The harvest I have 
reaped has been abundant . . . and if I can believe the news 
communicated to me here (at Livorno) we are approaching the 
epoch we so much desire. The fall of thrones is no longer a 
matter of doubt to me now that I have just studied the work of 
our societies in France, in Switzerland, in Germany, and as far 
as Russia. The assault which in a few years and perhaps even 
in a few months from now will be made on the princes of the 
earth will bury them under the wreckage of their impotent 
armies and their decrepit thrones. Everywhere there is enthu- 
siasm in our ranks and apathy or indifference amongst the 
enemies. This is a certain and infallible sign of success. . . . 
What have we asked in return for our labours and our sacrifices? 
It is not a revolution in one country or another. That can 
always be managed if one wishes it. In order to kill the old 
world surely, we have held that we must stifle the Catholic and 
Christian germ, and you, with the audacity of genius, have 
offered yourself with the sling of a new David to hit the pon- 
tifical Goliath on the head. 1 " 

Piccolo Tigre was perfectly right in his estimate of the 
" apathy and indifference " of the ruling classes, and in the 
success this attitude promised to the conspirators. No 
civilized modern government can be overthrown by vio- 
lence if it realizes the danger that threatens it and firmly 
resolves to defend itself. It is not resistance but weakness 
that produces revolution, for weakness invites audacity 
and audacity is the essence of the revolutionary spirit. 
" Osez! " said St. -Just, " ce mot est toute la politique de la 
R6volution. " (" Dare! this word is the whole policy of 

1 CrStineau-Joly, VEglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, ii. 387. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 133 

♦ 
revolution.") So whilst the revolutionary forces were mus- 
tering, the Government of France remained sublimely 
oblivious to the coming danger. On the surface few signs 
of popular effervescence were apparent. The incendiary 
doctrines of the agitators seemed to have made little head- 
way amongst the great mass of the people. The peasants, 
indeed, with their passionate love of possession, saw little 
to attract them in the communal ownership of the land 
and continued to dig and plant with undiminished ardour. 
Only in the towns the fire of revolutionary Socialism was 
smouldering silently, unnoticed or ignored by those in 
power. The government, reassured by the loyal spirit of 
the army and deluded by the perfect calm that reigned in 
the streets, made no preparations for defence. The circu- 
lation of seditious papers was known to be small, the 
theories of Buchez and of Louis Blanc were believed to 
have taken no hold on the masses — one could afford to 
shrug one's shoulders at the number of their following. As 
to Proudhon the police had declared in 1846: " His doc- 
trines are very dangerous, there are gun-shots at the end of 
them; fortunately they are not read." Perhaps the most 
unconcerned person was the King himself. " No human 
power," wrote M. Cuvillier Fleury, " could have made 
him read a page of M. Louis Blanc, of M. Pierre Leroux, of 
M. Buchez, or of M. Proudhon." x 

So with sublime insouciance the " monarchy of July " 
awaited the explosion. 

This is not the place to relate in detail the political 
events which led up to the four months revolution of 1848. 
Ministerial corruption — always the bane of France from 
the first revolution onwards — opposition to electoral 
reform, indifference to the interests of the people provided 
quite sufficient grounds for insurrection. In vain de 
Tocqueville warned the Chamber of Deputies whither this 
state of public affairs must lead them: " My profound 
conviction is that we are sleeping on a volcano." And 
after quoting various scandalous instances of corruption 
he went on to say: 

1 Imbert de Saint-Amand, Marie Amelie et la societe francaise en 18A7 
pp. 102-110. . * * 



134 WORLD REVOLUTION 

It is by such acts as these that great catastrophes are pre- 
pared. Let us seek in history the efficacious causes that have 
taken away power from the governing classes; they tost it when 
they became by their egoism unworthy to retain it. . . . The 
evils I point out will bring about the gravest revolutions ;*do 
you not feel by a sort of intuition that the soil of Europe trembles 
once more? Is there not a breath of revolution in the air? . . . 
Do you know what may happen in two years : in one year, 
perhaps to-morrow? . . . Keep your laws if you will, but for 
God's sake change the spirit of the Government. That spirit 
leads to the abyss. 1 

No truer words were ever spoken. Corrupt and selfish 
politicians will always be the most useful allies of Anar- 
chists. We cannot doubt that Proudhon and Blanqui 
rejoiced over the callous attitude of the Government as 
heartily as de Tocqueville deplored it. The very real 
grounds for popular discontent would serve, as de Tocque- 
ville clearly saw, to " magnify doctrines which tend to 
nothing less than the overthrow of all the foundations on 
which society rests." 

The ministerial banquets planned by the heads of the 
masonic lodges 2 for the 22nd of February and forbidden 
by the government provided the pretext for insurrection. 
When in the morning of that day the obedient army of the 
proletariat assembled in answer to the summons of the 
revolutionary papers Le National and La Reforme, the cry 
of " A bas Guizot! " that rose from their ranks was less 
a protest against Guizot's policy than a call to revolution 
for revolution's sake. Deluded by the promises of the 
Utopian Socialists, inflamed by the teachings of the 
Anarchists, it was now no longer electoral reform nor even 
universal suffrage that could satisfy the people ; it was not 
a mere Republic they demanded or a change of ministry, 
it was the complete overthrow of the existing system of 
government in favour of the social millennium promised 
them by the theorists, and which the agitators had urged 
them to establish by force of arms. 

The dismissal of Guizot by the King on the 23rdof 
February did nothing, therefore, to allay popular agitation, 
and according to the usual revolutionary programme the 

1 Emile de Bonnechose, Histoire de France, ii. 647 

2 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 282. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 135 

insurgents proceeded to barricade the streets and to pillage 
the gunsmiths' shops. 

But even then it proved difficult to bring about a 
conflict, for the sympathies of the bourgeoisie were still 
with the people, and the National Guards, seeing in the 
working-men their brothers, showed reluctance to use force 
against them. 1 This feeling of camaraderie, contemptu- 
ously described by Marx as " charlatanry of general fra- 
ternity," 2 was dispelled by the menacing attitude the 
working-men were persuaded to assume, and inevitably 
the demonstrations that followed — the hoisting of the 
red flag, the marching of processions amongst which could 
be seen the glint of steel and brandishing of sabres — led 
to a collision with the troops. In the confusion a number 
of the insurgents fell victims to the fire of the irritated 
soldiery. This skirmish, described as " the massacre of the 
Boulevard des Capucines," gave the signal for revolution. 

Throughout that night of February 23-24 the Secret 
Societies were at work issuing their orders; meanwhile 
Proudhon busied himself drawing up a plan of attack. 3 
Dawn found the city in a state of chaos, the trees of the 
boulevards were broken to the ground, the paving-stones 
torn up, excited bands of insurgents — working-men of the 
faubourgs, students, schoolboys, deserters from the 
National Guard — collected round the Tuileries, shots 
were fired in at the windows of the young princes. This 
was the moment chosen by Louis Blanc and his friends to 
issue a protest against the employment of troops in civil 
commotions, which, handed from barricade to barricade, 
immensely enboldened the audacity of the revolutionaries, 
who now proceeded to seize munitions and attack the 
municipal Guard, killing a number of them. The hesitating 
policy of the government and the declarations of the agita- 
tors inevitably affected the morale of the troops, and by 
the middle of the morning they ceased to offer any further 
resistance and left the people in possession of the field. 
Already Proudhon and Flocon had posted up a placard 
demanding the deposition of the King, and amongst the 

1 Cambridge Modern History, vol. xi. 97. 

1 Marx, La Lutte des classes en France, p. 40. 

• Cambridge Modern History, vol. xi. p. 99. 



136 WORLD REVOLUTION 

leaders — Caussidiere, Arago, Sobrier, and others — the 
word " Republic " made itself heard. In vain Louis 
Philippe, profiting by the error committed by his prede- 
cessor Louis XVI. in precisely the same circumstances, 
mounted a gorgeously caparisoned horse in order to 
inspect the troops assembled in the Tuileries gardens and 
promised reforms to the excited populace ; the hour of the 
Orleaniste dynasty had struck, and at one o'clock the 
royal family chose the prudent course of flight. 

Thus in the space of a few hours the monarchy was 
swept away and the " Social Democratic Republic " 
was proclaimed. 1 

But now the men who had brought about the crisis 
were faced with the work of reconstruction — a very 
different matter. For it is one thing to sit at one's desk 
peaceably writing about the beauties of revolution, it is 
quite another to find oneself in the midst of a tumultuous 
city where all the springs of law and order have been 
broken; it is one thing to talk romantically about " the 
sovereignty of the people," it is less soothing to one's 
vanity to be confronted with working-men of real flesh 
and blood insolently demanding the fulfilment of the 
promises one has made them. This was the experience that 
fell to the lot of the men composing the Provisional Gov- 
ernment the day after the King's abdication. All advo- 
cates of social revolution, they now for the first time saw 
revolution face to face — and liked it less well than on paper. 

The hoisting of the red flag by the populace — 
described by Lamartine as " the symbol of threats and 
disorders " — had struck terror into the hearts of all except 
Louis Blanc, and it was not until Lamartine in an impas- 
sioned speech had besought the angry multitude to restore 
the tricouleur that the red flag was finally lowered and the 
deputies were able to retire to the Hotel de Ville and dis- 
cuss the new scheme of government. 

In all the history of the " Labour Movement " no more 
dramatic scene has ever been enacted than that which now 
took place. Seated around the council table were the 

1 Louis Blanc, La Revolution de 1848, p. 23; Memoir es de Caussidiere, 
p. 62. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 137 

men who for the last ten years had fired the people with 
enthusiasm for the principles of the first Revolution — 
Lamartine, panegyrist of the Gironde, Louis Blanc the 
Robespierriste, Ledru Rollin, whose chief source of pride 
was his supposed resemblance to Danton. 

Suddenly the door of the council chamber burst open 
and a working-man entered, gun in hand, his face con- 
vulsed with rage, followed by several of his comrades. 
Advancing towards the table where sat the trembling 
demagogues, Marche, for this was the name of the leader 
of the deputation, struck the floor with the butt end of his 
gun and said loudly: " Citizens, it is twenty-four hours 
since the revolution was made ; the people await the results. 
They send me to tell you that they will brook no more 
delays. They wish for the right to work — the right to 
work at once." 

Twenty-four hours since the revolution had been made, 
and the New Heavens and the New Earth had not yet been 
created! The theorists had calculated without the immense 
impatience of " the People," they had forgotten that to 
simple practical minds to give is to give quickly and at 
once; that the immense social changes represented by 
Louis Blanc in his Organisation du travail as quite a simple 
matter had been accepted by the workers in the same 
unquestioning spirit ; of the enormous difficulties incidental 
to the readjustment of the conditions of the labour, of the 
time it must take to reconstruct the whole social system, 
Marche and his companions could have no conception. 
They had been promised the " right to work," and the 
gigantic organization that brief formula entailed was to be 
accomplished in one day and instantly put into operation. 

Louis Blanc admits that his first emotion on hearing 
the tirade of Marche was that of anger; * it were better if 
he had said of shame. It was he more than any other who 
had shown the workers the land of promise, and now that it 
had proved a mirage he, more than any other, was to 
blame. Before promising one must know how to perform 
— and to perform without delay. 

It was apparently Lamartine whom the working-men 

1 Louis Blanc. La Revolution dt 1848, p. 31. 



138 WORLD REVOLUTION 

regarded as trie chief obstacle to their demand for " the 
right to work," for throughout his speech Marche had fixed 
his eyes, '* blazing with audacity," on those of the poet of 
the Gironde. Lamartine, outraged by this attitude, there- 
upon replied in an imperious tone that were he threatened 
by a thousand deaths, were he led by Marche and his com- 
panions before the loaded cannons down beneath the 
windows, he would never sign a decree of which he did not 
understand the meaning. But finally conquering his irri- 
tation, he adopted a more conciliatory tone, and placing 
his hand on the arm of the angry workman he besought 
him to have patience, pointing out that legitimate as his 
demand might be, so great a measure as the organization 
of labour must take time to elaborate, that in the face of 
so many crying needs the government must be given time 
to formulate its schemes, that all competent men must be 
consulted. . . . 

The eloquence of the poet triumphed, gradually 
Marche' s indignation died down; the workmen, honest 
men touched by the evident sincerity of the speaker, 
looked into each other's eyes questioningly, with an expres- 
sion of relenting, and Marche, interpreting their attitude, 
cried out, " Well, then, yes, we will wait. We will have 
confidence in our government. The people will wait ; they 
place three months of misery at the service of the 
Republic! " 1 

Have more pathetic words ever been uttered in the 
whole history of social revolution? Like their forefathers 
of 1792 these men were ready to suffer, to sacrifice them- 
selves for the new-formed Republic represented to them as 
the one hope of salvation for France, and animated by this 
noble enthusiasm they were willing to trust the political 
charlatans who had led them on with fair promises into 
abortive insurrection. Even whilst Lamartine was urging 
patience, Louis Blanc, still intent on his untried theories, 
had retired into the embrasure of a window, where, with 
Flocon and Ledru Rollin, he drew up the decree, founded 
on the 10th article of Robespierre's " Declaration of the 
Rights of Man." by which the Provisional Government 
Daniel Stern, op. tit. i. 379. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 139 

undertook to " guarantee work to all citizens." Louis 
Blanc was probably the only man present who believed in 
the possibility of carrying out this promise, yet all ended 
by subscribing to it, and the same day the decree was 
publicly proclaimed throughout Paris. 

Two days later the National Workshops, which were to 
provide the promised employment, were opened under the 
direction of Emile Thomas and of M. Marie. The result 
was inevitably disastrous, necessary work being insuffi- 
cient, the workmen were sent hither and thither from one 
employer to another, useless jobs were devised that neces- 
sarily proved discouraging to the men engaged on them, 
whilst the workers in the skilled trades for whom no 
employment could be found had to be maintained on " an 
unemployment dole." This last measure, the most demor- 
alizing of all, had the effect of attracting thousands of 
workers from all over the country, and even from abroad, 
into the capital. 1 

The organization of the National Workshops and their 
lamentable failure has frequently been ascribed by oppo- 
nents of Socialism to Louis Blanc. This is inaccurate. The 
manner in which these workshops were conducted was not 
that advocated by Louis Blanc in his Organisation du 
travail, and must be ascribed solely to MM. Marie and 
Thomas. But the principle on which they were founded, 
namely the duty of the State to provide work or payment 
for every man, was nevertheless the one adopted by Louis 
Blanc from Robespierre. Once this premise is accepted 
many of the difficulties that contributed to the failure of 
the National Workshops are bound to follow. The mere 
fact that a man has no longer to depend on his own efforts 
to seek and find employment must inevitably lead to lack 
of enterprise and to idleness on the part of those who do 
not want to work ; moreover, if payment is to be received 
whether a man is in or out of employment it will be 
obviously a matter of indifference to the slacker whether 
he keeps his job or loses it. 

That in a civilized state no man should be allowed to 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit. i. 484. See also report of May 29 given in The 
Economist for June 3, 184S (vi. 617). 



140 WORLD REVOLUTION 

starve because he cannot find work is clearly evident, but 
that some degree of privation should attach to unemploy- 
ment is absolutely necessary to the very existence of 
industry. 

The truth is, as Mermeix points out, the Provisional 
Government of 1848 had promised the impossible because 
" a government cannot guarantee work since it does not 
depend on it to provide consumers." * Moreover, the funds 
with which it pays out unemployment doles can only be 
raised in the form of taxation which automatically reduces 
the spending power of the community, thus creating fur- 
ther unemployment. 

Magnificent, then, as the recognition of " the right to 
work " may be in theory, no Government has so far been 
able to put it into practice without aggravating the evil it 
has set out to cure. 

If, therefore, Louis Blanc cannot be held responsible 
for the methods of the National Workshops, it is impos- 
sible to deny that his precipitate action in formulating the 
proclamation of " the right to work " largely contributed 
to the chaos that followed. Moreover, we shall see that 
when at last he was able to put his own theories into prac- 
tice the experiment proved not much more successful than 
that of MM. Thomas and Marie. 

It was on the 10th of March that a committee began 
its sittings at the Luxembourg, presided over by Louis 
Blanc with the workman Albert as vice-president. Before 
this board employers and employed were summoned to 
attend and put forward their claims or grievances ; builders 
and their workmen, master bakers and baker boys, omni- 
bus owners and drivers, all arrived in crowds to discuss the 
questions of hours and payment. In general the employers 
showed themselves magnanimous and perfectly ready to 
co-operate in any reasonable reforms, 2 but this, as Mme. 
d'Agoult observes, could not satisfy the ambition of Louis 
Blanc, " which dreamt of changing the world." 3 A sane 
and practical man with the interests of the people really 
at heart, given his opportunity, might have laid forever the 

1 Mermeix (G. Terrail), Le Syndicalisme contre le socialisme, p. 51. 

2 " The employers gave evidence of the most conciliatory disposition " 
(Daniel Stern, op. cit. ii. 49). 3 Ibid. p. 48. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 141 

foundations of an improved industrial system, but Louis 
Blanc seated in the historic armchair of the Chancelier 
Pasquier could only fall back, like his predecessors of 1789, 
on the fatal gift of eloquence, and at every moment " began 
again the epic recital of the Revolution and the tableau 
of the great things accomplished by the people." 1 

Strange this tendency of Socialism that imagines itself 
progressive to hark back eternally to the past! 

The working-men on their part showed themselves in 
the main perfectly sane and reasonable, demanding protec- 
tion from the exploitation of middle-men, and a reduction 
in the hours of labour to ten or eleven a day, giving for 
their reason a theory tenable perhaps at a period when 
working days consisted of fourteen or fifteen hours, but 
which to-day has been perverted into the disastrous sys- 
tem known as " Ca' Canny," namely that " the longer the 
day is the fewer workers are employed, and that the 
workers who are occupied absorb a salary which might be 
divided amongst a greater number of workers." They 
also " criticised excessive work as an obstacle to their 
education and the intellectual development of the people.''' 

At any rate, whether sound or not in their political 
economy, the people of Paris at this crisis showed them- 
selves in no way prone to violence ; the people did not wish 
for bloodshed and for barricades, for burnings and destruc- 
tion. Reduced to its simplest expression, they asked for 
two things only — bread and work : what juster demand 
could have been formulated? And they were ready, as 
Marche had said, to wait, to suffer, to sacrifice themselves 
not only for their own ultimate welfare but for the glory of 
France. Misled as they had been by visionaries, illusioned 
as they were on the benefits of the first French Revolution, 
they asked for no repetition of its horrors but only to be 
allowed to work in peace and fraternity. 

" Citizens, . . ." wrote the cloth printers to the Provisional 
Government at the end of March 1848, " we, workers ourselves, 
printers on stuff, we offer you our feeble co-operation, we bring 
you 2000 francs to help towards the success of your noble crea- 
tion. . . . Let them be reassured those who may believe in a 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit. p. 41. 
8 Memoires de Caussidiere, i. 286. 



142 WORLD REVOLUTION 

return to the bloody scenes enacted in our history! Let them 
be reassured! Neither civil war, nor war abroad shall rend the 
entrails of our beautiful France! Let them be reassured on our 
National Assembly, for there will be neither Montagnards nor 
Girondins! Yes, let them be reassured and let them help to give 
to Europe a magic sight, let them show the universe that in 
France there has been no violence in the revolution, that there 
has only been a change of system, that honour has succeeded to 
corruption, the sovereignty of the people and of equity to odious 
despotism, force and order to weakness, union to castes, to 
tyranny this sublime device: ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 
progress, civilization, happiness for all and all for happiness! ' " - 1 

What might not have been done with a people such as 
this, so filled with gay enthusiasm, with noble patriotism, 
if only they had had leaders worthy of them? But on one 
side Louis Blanc, helpless and hesitating now that he was 
brought face to face with realities, pushing aside sane 
reforms in favour of unrealizable ideals, and on the other 
Blanqui, Proudhon, wild beasts crouching to spring, 
waiting to rend and destroy that very civilization for which 
the people were ready to sacrifice their all! 

But Louis Blanc, obsessed with his idea of " working- 
men's associations," led the people from the path of true 
reform into the wilderness. The National Workshops, he 
afterwards declared, were a failure because they were not 
conducted on the Socialistic lines he advocated, and the 
Government refused to give him funds to put his own 
theories into practice. But, as Mme. d'Agoult explains, 
what the Government really refused to M. Blanc was " a 
budget and a ministry " which would have satisfied his 
ambitions. The Government did provide M. Blanc with 
funds to start " associations of working-men " on his own 
lines, and gave him a perfectly free hand in organizing 
them. The first of these experiments was made at the 
H6tel de Clichy, which M. Blanc was allowed to transform 
from a debtors' prison into an enormous national tailors' 
shop; he was then given capital free of interest, " subsist- 
ence money " w&s advanced to the workers, and an order 
for 25,000 uniforms for the National Guards was placed by 
the Government. The usual contractor's price for these 
uniforms was eleven francs each, " a sum found sufficient 

1 Daniel Stern, op. tit. i. 514. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 143 

to provide the profit of the master tailor, remuneration for 
his workshop and tools, interest on his capital and wages 
for the workmen." * But now that the profits of the rapa- 
cious capitalist were to be eliminated it was expected that 
a handsome balance would remain over after the cost of 
materials had been defrayed, and this was to be divided 
equally amongst the workers. Unhappily when the first 
order was completed the cost proved to be far higher than 
under the old capitalistic system, and the uniforms worked 
out at 16 instead of 11 francs each. Moreover, though 
" the principle of glory, love, and fraternity was so strong 
that the tailors worked twelve and thirteen hours a day, 
and the same even on Sundays," the ragged new recruits 
to the army were kept waiting so long for their uniforms 
that, driven to exasperation, they went several times to 
Clichy and quarrelled violently with the tailors over the 
delay. " This," says Mme. d'Agoult, " was the origin of the 
scission between the ' people ' in blouses and the ' people ' 
in uniforms which led at last to a mortal combat." 2 

Louis Blanc's other experiments were attended with 
not much more success. His " association of arm-chair 
makers " dwindled in one year from 400 members to 20, 
and out of 180 associations in all only 10 survived until 
1867. 3 

A further breach was brought about between the 
soldiers and the industrial workers by the attempt of the 
Government to establish " equality " in the army. On the 
14th of March it had passed the decree ordering the 
smartest battalions of the National Guards to renounce 
their distinctive uniforms and likewise all insignia of 
superior rank. More preposterous still, the election of new 
officers was to be made henceforth by universal suffrage. 4 

The result was of course an explosion of indignation 
amongst the soldiers, and on the 16th of March a proces- 
sion of 4000 to 5000 National Guards marched on the 
Hdtel de Ville to protest against the decree. Here they 

1 Problems and Perils of Socialism, by J. St. Loe Strachey, quoting 
contemporary account on this experiment in The Economist for May 20, 
1848 (vol. vi. p. 562). 

2 Daniel Stern, op. cit. ii. 165. 

8 Heckethorn, Secret Societies, ii. 222, 223. 

4 Daniel Stern, op. cit. ii. 55; Caussidiere, op. cit. i. 176. 



144 WORLD REVOLUTION 

encountered a crowd of workmen and young boys, with 
whom they came into collision; insults and blows were 
exchanged, and the breach between the bourgeoisie and the 
people was now definitely created. 

This breach was necessary to the Socialist leaders if 
they were to retain their ascendancy, and the revolution 
was not to end in the peaceful amelioration of the workers' 
lot. Accordingly they seized the opportunity offered by 
popular excitement to organize a demonstration for the 
following day, and as in the first French Revolution the 
people were ordered out en masse. A huge crowd was to 
assemble in the Place de la Concorde and march to the 
H6tel de Ville in order to congratulate the members of the 
Provisional Government and demand the postponement 
of the elections, which might possibly remove the Socialists 
from power. This programme, naively drawn up by the 
Socialists themselves — Louis Blanc, Caussidiere, and 
Ledru Rollin — was issued to all the different districts of 
Paris on the evening of the 16th. 

But already the organizers of the procession found 
themselves outdistanced by the clubs acting under the 
orders of the Secret Societies, and whilst the people were 
being invited by the members of the Provisional Govern- 
ment to come and demonstrate in favour of their remaining 
in office Blanqui was concerting another agitation for the 
purpose of ejecting them. It was thus that, when the 
immense procession arrived at the H6tel de Ville on the 
17th of March, Louis Blanc and his colleagues found them- 
selves confronted not by congratulatory and admiring 
bands of workers but by a hostile army, at the head of 
which were found their enemies and rivals to power — 
Barbes, Blanqui, Cabet, Sobrier, and others — " whose 
expression," says Louis Blanc, " held something sinister." 

In vain Louis Blanc took refuge in his habitual revolu- 
tionary eloquence, declaring that the only desire of the Pro- 
visional Government was "to march with the people, to live 
for them, if necessary to die for them" ; the crowd, wearied 
of such protestations, gave way to prolonged murmurs. 
1 'The people," cried one of them, "expect more than words." 1 

1 Caussidiere, op. cit. i, 182. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 145 

But words in the end prevailed, and floods of oratory 
poured forth by Ledru Rollin and Lamartine finally had 
the effect of calming the agitation of the crowd, which 
towards five o'clock in the afternoon gradually melted 
away to the cries of ''Vive Louis Blanc, Vive Ledru Rollin!" 

Caussidiere afterwards described this " day of March 
17 " as the " pacific victory of the people by calm and 
reason " ; in reality it was a victory for the Socialists of the 
Provisional Government. From the people's point of view 
the day had proved as abortive as most of the " great 
days " of the first revolution, in which they had acted 
simply as the tools of political adventurers. " The greater 
number of the workmen," says Mme. d'Agoult, " who had 
joined spontaneously in the manifestation in a sincere and 
naive spirit of Republican fraternity, were persuaded that 
they had given the Government a mark of respect and had 
defended them against royalist plots." For themselves 
they had gained nothing but an increase of hostility on the 
part of the bourgeoisie, who had watched with growing 
anxiety the menacing aspect of the procession. 

The result of " the day of March the 17th " was to 
throw back irretrievably the cause of the Paris workmen. 
So far they had gained certain points in their programme 
— the establishment of the "social and democratic 
Republic," the promise of universal suffrage at the coming 
elections, the recognition by the Provisional Government 
of " the right to work," and the application of this prin- 
ciple in the National Workshops, which, however unsatis- 
factory from the point of view of the State, had relieved 
unemployment. Had the revolution ceased early in March 
before the passing of the impolitic decree concerning the 
National Guards, it must have ended in a triumph for the 
workers. But the action of the Socialists in throwing this 
apple of discord between the people and the bourgeoisie 
turned the tide in favour of reaction. Not only in Paris 
but all over the country the display of force exhibited by 
the procession of March 17 created widespread alarm. The 
provinces had no intention of falling again, as in 1793, 
under the domination of the Paris populace, and a strong 
Conservative spirit was aroused that boded ill for the 



146 WORLD REVOLUTION; 

success of Socialist candidates at the elections. " From 
this moment," writes the Comtesse d'Agoult, " there 
begins for the proletariat a series of reverses in which it is 
to lose all the advantages it had won in a few hours, and of 
which it had made use generously, it is true, and with 
greatness, but without discernment or foresight." 1 

This was the whole cause of the working-men's failure 
in 1848. Instead of acting on their own initiative, instead 
of pressing the advantages they had really gained, they 
allowed themselves to be led into fruitless agitation by a 
band of political charlatans who were mainly occupied in 
quarrelling amongst themselves. 

Thus whilst Louis Blanc continued to represent himself 
to the people with his usual eloquence as the sole repre- 
sentative of their cause, the partisans of Ledru Rollin 
(amongst them George Sand the novelist) intrigued to 
establish a revolutionary government under his dictator- 
ship, and Blanqui stirred up the workmen to resist the 
convocation of the National Assembly. Meanwhile 
Lamartine, seeing his own power waning, endeavoured to 
frighten Ledru Rollin " with visions of Blanqui sharpening 
his dagger in the background," and at the same time con- 
tinued to confer secretly with Blanqui in the hope of 
winning him over to his side. Amidst all this confusion of 
plans the people counted for nothing, but each faction 
hoped by a further " popular manifestation " to triumph 
finally over its rivals. 

On the 16th of April the people of Paris were once more 
summoned forth on the pretext of electing fourteen officers 
for the staff of the army, according to the new decree of 
election by popular suffrage. At 10 o'clock in the morning 
a procession of 8000 working-men assembled in the Champ 
de Mars, holding aloft their banners with Socialist devices 
such as: " Abolition of the exploitation of man by man," 
" Equality," " Organization of work," etc. This army, 
which had started out quite peaceably, now stirred up by 
Blanqui, increased to 40,000 and then proceeded to march 
on the H6tel de Ville, whereat a panic spread throughout 
the city. Scare news was passed from mouth to mouth: 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit. ii. 154. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 147 

" The Faubourg St. Antoine has risen in revolt! The 
Communists have taken the Invalides, they are setting 
fire to it; 200,000 proletarians in arms are preparing to 
sack Paris! " 

On arrival at the Place de Greve before the entrance to 
the Hotel de Ville a number of troops, however, were drawn 
up, and now the scission that had been created between 
the soldiers and the working-men became again apparent. 
The inclination to fraternize with their comrades in blouses 
that earlier in the Revolution had marked the attitude of 
the troops had changed to active hostility, and from their 
ranks arose the cry: " Down with the Communists! Down 
with Blanqui! Down with Louis Blanc! " 

The tide had turned irrevocably against the workers. 
As the dejected battalions of the industrial " proletariat " 
filed past the Hotel de Ville through the serried ranks of 
the soldiery and finally dispersed, no doubt remained that 
the day had ended in defeat and it was to the Socialists 
the workers owed their humiliation. The working-men 
had not on their own initiative assumed the menacing 
attitude that alarmed the citizens of Paris; they had not 
devised the truculent mottoes inscribed upon their banners. 
It was Blanqui with his ferocious methods of agitation, 
it was Louis Blanc with his foolish theorizings, who had 
turned their just demands for social reform into war on the 
community and created the gulf that yawned between the 
workmen and the rest of Paris. Up to the outbreak of 
the 1848 revolution the bourgeoisie, as we have seen, had 
regarded the aspirations of the " people " with the greatest 
sympathy; the work of the Socialists was to destroy this 
understanding and to consolidate not only the bourgeoisie 
but the whole non-industrial population in a mass antag- 
onistic to the workers. It is from this moment that we can 
date that narrowing down of the word " people " to 
signify only the " industrial proletariat,'' 1 the sense in 
which it has been used throughout by Marxian Socialists, 
and that has contributed so largely to the divorce between 
Socialism and democracy. 

The 16th of April was followed by a great wave of 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit. ii. 15» 



148 WORLD REVOLUTION 

reaction in all quarters of the city. The authors of the 
manifestation became the objects of indignant denuncia- 
tions ; a furious crowd carried a coffin beneath the window 
of Cabet. " One half of Paris," wrote the Prefect of the 
Police, " wishes to imprison the other." 1 Even the allies 
of the Socialists were suddenly smitten with misgivings, 
and it was George Sand, the disciple of Babeuf and Pierre 
Leroux, who was believed to have written these words in 
the Bulletins de la Republique for the 20th of April : 

As to the Communists, against whom so many cries of repro- 
bation and of anger have been heard, they were not worth the 
trouble of a demonstration. That a little number of sectarians 
should preach the chimerical establishment of the impossible 
equality of fortunes need not surprise or alarm one. At all 
periods misguided minds have pursued the realization of this 
dream without ever attaining it. 2 

The reaction was not confined to Paris alone. All over 
France the tide turned irrevocably against Socialism, and 
in the elections that followed the people showed themselves 
overwhelmingly in favour of the moderates. But the 
revolutionaries had gained one point, namely that they 
had put an end to what Marx described as " the char- 
latanry of universal fraternity," and the gulf between the 
industrial proletariat and the rest of the nation yawned 
more widely than ever. 

When the new National Assembly met on the 4th of 
May the extremists Proudhon, Cabet, Louis Blanc, and 
Blanqui were all rejected by the electors, as also the 
11 Labour " candidates in favour of Communism who had 
been put forward by the Committee of the Luxembourg : 
and it was Lamartine who now received the plaudits of the 
crowd. This was largely owing to the attitude of Louis 
Blanc, who had made it clear that he aimed at nothing less 
than " the absolute domination of the proletariat," 3 a 
proposition that, placed before a spirited nation possessing 
an energetic and intelligent bourgeoisie, must necessarily 
encounter determined opposition. 

Louis Blanc, moreover, possessed the irritating char- 
acteristic, common to many Socialists, of imagining that he 

1 Daniel Stem, op. cit. ii. 179-180. 2 Ibid. p. 183. 

» Ibid., op. cit. ii. 207. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1S4S 149 

alone was animated by sincere love for the people, and 
his discourse to the Assembly on the 10th of May, aga:^ 
demanding " a ministry of work and progress.'' was so 
tinged with this peculiar form of egoism as to provoke cries 
of protest. Finally the whole Assembly rose in a body, 
whilst from all sides shouts went up: " You have not the 
monopoly of love for the people! We are all here for the 
social question, we have all come in the name of the people ! 
The whole Assembly is here to defend the rights of the 
people! " 1 

The new assembly thus found itself crushed between 
two forces — on one hand the bourgeoisie rendered intrac- 
table by the menace of Communism, on the other the revo- 
lutionaries who, now legally excluded from the government, 
were obliged to cast about for a further pretext to stir up 
the people. This was provided by a revolt in Poland which 
the Prussian troops had ruthlessly suppressed on the 5th 
of May, and the working-men of Paris were summoned to 
assemble in their thousands as a protest against this dis- 
play of arbitrary authority. Accordingly, on the 13th a 
procession of 5000 to 6000 people, led by Sobrier and 
Huber. a professional agitator of equivocal antecedents, 
marched to the Place de la Concorde, shouting: " Vive la 
Pologne! " The working-men in the crowd, who had 
started out in all good faith to agitate, as they had been 
told to do, in favour of oppressed Poland, were animated 
by no revolutionary intentions and never dreamt of over- 
throwing the Assembly elected by universal suffrage. But, 
as usual, agents of disorder had mingled in their ranks, 
strangers of sinister appearance ready to side either with 
police or mob in order to provoke a riot, well-dressed 
women not of the people were observed inciting the crowd 
to violence. 2 

At the bridge of the Concorde the procession seemed to 
hesitate, but Blanqui, now placing himself at its head, 
cried loudly, " Forward! " and the whole mass surged 
towards the palace occupied by the Assembly. The small 
number of National Guards assembled proved powerless 
to stem the oncoming tide of 150.000 men and women, 

1 Daniel Stem, pp. 237-238. » I:iz. cp. at. ii. 258. 



150 WORLD REVOLUTION 

which pressed onwards with such force that a number of 
people were crushed to death at the entrance of the Palace. 

It was then that Lamartine, braver than his predeces- 
sors the revolutionaries of 1792, came forward out of the 
Assembly and faced the people. 

" Citizen Lamartine," said one of the leaders, Laviron, 
" we have come to read a petition to the Assembly in 
favour of Poland. ..." 

1 ' You shall not pass, ' ' Lamartine answered imperiously. 

" By what right will you prevent us from passing? 
We are the people. Too long have you made fine phrases; 
the people want something besides phrases, they wish to 
go themselves to the Assembly and signify their wishes." 

How true was the word uttered by a voice in the crowd 
at this juncture: " Unhappy ones, what are you doing? 
You are throwing back the cause of liberty for more than 
a century! " 

In vain the men who had raised the storm now tried to 
quell it. Whilst the crowd pressed onwards into the hall 
of the Assembly, Thomas, Raspail, Barbes, Ledru Rollin, 
Buchez, Louis Blanc struggled amidst the suffocating 
heat of the May day and the odour of massed humanity to 
make their voices heard. Louis Blanc at the table declared 
that " the people by their cries had violated their own 
sovereignty"; the crowd responded with shouts of: 
" Vive la Pologne! Vive l'organisation du travail! " 
Louis Blanc, attacked with the weapon he himself had 
forged, was reduced to impotence; it was no longer the 
theorist who had deluded them with words that the people 
demanded, but Blanqui, the man of action, the instigator 
of violence and fury. " Blanqui! Where is Blanqui? We 
want Blanqui! " was the cry of the multitude. And 
instantly, borne on the shoulders of the crowd, the strange 
figure of the famous agitator appeared — a little man pre- 
maturely bent, with wild eyes darting flame from hollows 
deep sunk in the sickly pallor of his face, with black hair 
shaved close like a monk's, his black coat buttoned up to 
meet his black tie, his hands encased in black gloves — 
and at this sinister vision a silence fell upon the crowd. 
Blanqui, suiting himself to the temper of his audience, 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 151 

thereupon delivered a harangue demanding that France 
should immediately declare war on Europe for the deliver- 
ance of Poland — truly a strange measure for the relief of 
public misery in Paris! Meanwhile Louis Blanc, with a 
Polish flag thrust into his hands, was making a valiant 
effort to recover his popularity. An eloquent discourse on 
" the sovereignty of the people " had at last the desired 
effect, and amidst cries of " Long live Louis Blanc! Long 
live the social and democratic Republic! " he too was 
hoisted on to the shoulders of the people and carried in 
triumph. But the emotion of the moment proved too great 
for the frail body; Louis Blanc, his face streaming with 
perspiration, attempted in vain to address the crowd, but 
no sound came from his lips and, finally lowered to earth, 
he fell fainting on a seat. 

The dementia of the crowd, urged on by the " Club- 
istes," now reached its height. Whilst Barbes vainly 
attempted to deliver a speech the tribune was assailed by 
a group of maniacs, who with clenched fists threatened 
each other and drowned his voice in tumultuous cries. 
To add to the confusion the galleries began to break down 
under the weight of the increasing crowd and a bursting 
water-tank flooded the corridor. 

At this juncture Huber, who had likewise fallen into a 
long swoon, suddenly recovered consciousness, and, 
mounting the tribune, declared in a voice of thunder that 
the Assembly was dissolved in the name of the people. 

At the same moment Buchez was flung out of his seat, 
Louis Blanc was driven by the crowd out on to the espla- 
nade of the Invalides, Raspail fainted on the lawn, Sobrier 
was carried in triumph by the workmen, and Huber 
disappeared. 

Then followed the inevitable reaction. The troops 
arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd, Barbes was 
arrested. Louis Blanc, with tumbled hair and torn clothes, 
succeeded in escaping from the National Guards and took 
refuge in the Assembly, only to find himself assailed with 
cries of indignation. 

" You always talk of yourself! You have no heart! " 

Whilst these extraordinary scenes had been taking 



152 WORLD REVOLUTION 

place at the Assembly another crowd of 200 people had 
invaded the Prefecture of Police, where Caussidiere, fol- 
lowing the example of Petion on the 10th of August, 
remained discreetly waiting to see which way the tide 
turned before deciding on the course he should take. Faced 
by an angry mob of insurgents the wretched Caussidiere, 
hitherto in the vanguard of revolution, now began to talk 
of " constitutional authority " and threatened to run a 
rebel through the body with his sabre. 1 

With the aid of the Republican Guard the Prefecture of 
Police was finally evacuated, and throughout Paris the 
troops set about restoring order. " The repression," writes 
the Comtesse d'Agoult, " is without pity because the 
attack has been terrible " — words ever to be remembered 
by the makers of revolution. The fiercer the onslaught the 
fiercer must be the resistance, and anarchy can only end in 
despotism. Even the revolutionary leaders are obliged to 
admit the reactionary effects of May the 15th, and the 
people themselves, always impressed by a display of 
authority, sided with the victors. When on the 16th of 
May the arrested conspirators leave for Vincennes " they 
hear, on going through the Faubourg St. Antoine, the 
imprecations of the crowd of men, women, and children 
who, in spite of the extreme heat of the day, follow the 
carriages with insults in their mouths as far as the first 
houses of Vincennes." 

But this revulsion of popular feeling was only momen- 
tary; before long the Socialists had re-established their 
ascendancy over the people. In the by-elections on June 
the 5th Pierre Leroux, Proudhon, and Caussidiere were all 
successful, and the situation was further complicated by 
the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. 

It was now that the Imperialist schemes of the Bona- 
partistes first became apparent, and that the cry of " Vive 
l'Empereur! " was first heard. The leaders of this faction, 
no less than those of the Socialists, realized that the over- 
throw of the existing government must be brought about 
by a popular insurrection, and the usual weapon of class 
hatred was employed by both with equal unscrupulous- 

1 Memoires de Caussidiere, ii. 136. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 153 

ness. Side by side with the hawkers of such gutter-press 
journals as the Robespierre, the Pdre Duchesne, the 
Carmagnole, the Journal de la Canaille, the vendors of the 
Napoleon Re'publicain pressed their wares on the soldiers, 
warning them that " the bourgeois Terror " would repre- 
sent them as the murderers of their brothers and invoking 
the red flag of social revolution. 1 

The government elected by the system of universal 
suffrage so long demanded thus found itself between two 
fires, and the whole revolutionary movement turned into 
a contest between the warring political parties. 

The industrial situation had now become chaotic. 
Trade was paralysed by the feeling of general insecurity 
and by continual strikes of workmen, whilst the men 
employed in the National Workshops showed an increasing 
tendency to revolt. This method of absorbing unemployed 
labour had, as we have seen, from the beginning proved 
a failure; and at last, after a vain attempt to improve 
matters by dismissing the provincial workmen who had 
crowded into Paris, and by reintroducing the system of 
piece-work, the Government announced its intention of 
abolishing the National Workshops. A decree to this 
effect was passed on the 21st of June and inevitably 
brought about the final crisis. On the evening of the same 
day bands of workmen again assembled, and to the rival 
cries of " Vive Barbes! " and " Vive Napoleon! " planned 
a fresh demonstration. 

Then followed the three fearful days of June the 22nd 
to the 25th. Barricades were once more erected in the 
streets, and war to the knife was declared on the Republic. 
As in every outbreak of the World Revolution, the insur- 
gents were composed of warring elements, all resolved to 
destroy the existing order and all animated by opposing 
aims. Thus, according to the report of Panisse, the head of 
the division for general security, the crowds that took part 
in the insurrection included, besides the workmen driven 
by hunger and despair to revolt, a number of honest and 
credulous people duped by the agitators — " Communists, 
dreamers of a Utopia amongst which each has his system 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit. ii. 341. 



154 WORLD REVOLUTION 

and disagreeing with each other; " Legitimists, demanding 
the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in the person of the 
Due de Chambord ; Bonapartistes, partisans of a regency ; 
and, finally, " the scum of all parties, convicts and wastrels ; 
in a word, the enemies of all society, men vowed by 
instinct to ideas of insurrection, theft, and pillage." x 

Against this terrible army the troops, led by the Gen- 
erals Cavaignac and Lamoriciere, reinforced by National 
Guards from all over France, displayed the greatest vigour, 
and on the 26th of June, after terrible fighting which left 
no less than 10,000 killed and wounded in the streets of 
Paris, Cavaignac remained master of the situation and a 
military dictatorship assumed control. 

It is unnecessary to follow the French Revolution of 
1848 through its final political stages — the election of 
Prince Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the Republic 
in December of the same year, the coup oVEtat carried out 
by him three years later (on December 2, 1851), by which 
the Constitution of 1848 was overthrown, and, finally, the 
proclamation of the Empire on December 10, 1852, with 
the prince as Napoleon III. at its head. Throughout this 
period the fire of social revolution could only smoulder 
feebly, and with the accession of the Emperor was tem- 
porarily extinguished in France. The regime that followed, 
like that which succeeded to the first French Revolution, 
was one of absolute repression. The Socialist leaders were 
arrested, no less than 25,000 prisoners were taken by the 
Government and a great number deported without trial. 
At the same time the Secret Societies were put down with 
an iron hand, all the liberties guaranteed to the French 
people, including the liberty of the press, were abolished 
by the Constitution of 1852, and this despotism was 
accepted by a majority of 7,000,000 to 600,000 votes. For 
as in 1800 the nation, wearied of revolution, was ready to 
throw itself at the feet of a strong man who would restore 
order and give it peace once more. 

The revolution of 1848 thus ended in the total defeat of 
the workers, and for this it is impossible to deny that the 
principal blame lay with the Socialist leaders — above all 

» Daniel Stern, ii. 598. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 155 

with Louis Blanc. It is only just to recognize the excel- 
lent intentions of the man, who devoted all his energies 
to the reorganization of labour on an ideal system, yet it 
must surely be admitted that social experiments of this 
kind can only be judged by results. The scientist who 
fails in a laboratory experiment may be pardoned for fail- 
ure, but in the case of men who juggle with human lives 
failure is crime. If a duke were to invent a novel system 
of drainage, and, without assuring himself of its efficacy, 
were to install it in all his tenants' cottages, thereby killing 
them off by diphtheria, he would not be regarded as a 
noble enthusiast whose only crime was excess of zeal, but 
as a criminal fool for whom no mercy should be demanded. 
Why then should reckless ventures, merely because they 
are conducted in the name of Socialism, ensure the 
immunity of their authors? Louis Blanc may well have 
been a sincere and well-meaning man, the fact remains 
that through his application of impracticable schemes and 
obstinate belief in his own infallibility he led the working- 
classes to disaster. No one has recognized this truth more 
clearly than the anarchist Proudhon, who in these words 
has apportioned to this dangerous dreamer the blame he 
so truly deserves : 

A great responsibility will rest in history on Louis Blanc. 
It was he who at the Luxembourg with his riddle " Equality, 
Fraternity, Liberty," with his abracadabra " Every one accord- 
ing to his strength, to every one according to his needs! " — 
began that miserable opposition of ideologies to ideas, and who 
roused common sense against Socialism. He thought himself the 
bee of the revolution and he was only the grasshopper. May 
he at last, after having poisoned the working-men with his 
absurd formulas, bring to the cause of the proletariat, which on 
a day of error fell into his feeble hands, the obol of his abstention 
and his silence ! x 

But a further reproach to be brought against Louis 
Blanc and his colleagues of 1848 is their habit of per- 
petually reverting to the past. " Let us respect the past," 
said Victor Hugo, " provided it is content to be dead; but 
if it wishes to be alive, we must attack it and try to kill 
it." Socialists who are quite willing to apply this maxim 

1 La Revolution au XlXieme stecle, p. 108. 



156 WORLD REVOLUTION 

to the noblest traditions of the past reject it when it is a 
matter of reviving exploded subversive doctrines or 
methods. So the men of 1848, instead of considering the 
needs of the present hour, instead of pressing forward to 
more enlightened schemes of social reform, persisted in 
harking back eternally to the principles of the first French 
Revolution ; soaked in the doctrines of their revolutionary- 
predecessors all craved to emulate them, and thus the 
so-called popular demonstrations organized by them in 
Paris between February and June of 1848 were directly 
modelled on those of 1789 to 1792. On this point both 
Marx and Proudhon are in accord. " The Revolution of 
1848," says Marx, " could do nothing better than parody 
first 1789 and then the revolutionary tradition of 1793- 
1795;" 1 and Proudhon covers with ridicule the manner 
in which the " souvenirs " of 1793 were constantly 
evoked by the leaders. It was " a universal mania," Mme. 
d'Agoult observes likewise, " from the 24th of February 
onwards to refer everything back to our first revolution." 
The failure of 1848 lay, therefore, not in over-zeal for 
progress, but in reactionariness, in blind attachment to 
past and dead traditions. 

The outbreak of revolution in Paris had given the 
signal for the European conflagration. On the 1st of March 
insurrection began in Baden, on the 12th in Vienna, on 
the 13th riots took place in Berlin, on the 18th a rising in 
Milan, on the 20th in Parma, on the 22nd a Republic was 
declared in Venice, on the 10th of April a Chartist demon- 
stration was organized in London, on the 7th of May 
troubles began in Spain, on the 15th in Naples, and dur- 
ing the course of the year no less than sixty-four out- 
breaks of serfs occurred in Russia. 

Of course, in the pages of official history we shall find 
no explanation of this sudden recurrence of the revolu- 
tionary epidemic, which is once more conveniently 
ascribed to the time-honoured theory of contagious 
popular enthusiasm for liberty. Thus the Cambridge 
Modern History, describing the revolution in Germany, 

1 Marx, La Lutte des classes, p. 192. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 157 

observes: " The Grand Duchy of Baden was the natural 
starting-place for the revolutionary movement, which, 
once set on foot, seemed to progress almost automatically 
from State to State and town to town." 

Precisely ; but we are given no hint as to the mechanism 
which produced this automatic action all over Europe. 
The business of the official historian is not to inquire into 
causes but to present the sequence of events in a manner 
unintelligible to the philosopher but satisfying to the 
uninquiring mind of the general public. ~ 

That the European Revolution of 1848 was the result 
of masonic organization cannot, however, be doubted by 
any one who takes trouble to dig below the surface. We 
have already seen how Mazzini and the " Young Italy " 
movement had proved the blind instruments of the Haute 
Vente Romaine, and how the same society operating 
through the lodges had prepared the ground in every 
country. In France the part played by Freemasonry in 
the revolutionary movement was quite frankly recognized, 
and the Supreme Council of the Scottish rite presenting 
themselves before the members of the Provisional Gov- 
ernment on the 10th of March received the congratula- 
tions of Lamartine in these words: 

I am convinced that it is from the depths of your lodges that 
have emanated, first in the shade, then in the half-light, and 
finally in the full light of day, the sentiments which ended by 
producing the sublime explosion we witnessed in 1789, and of 
which the people of Paris have just given to the world the 
second and, I hope, the last representation. 1 

But, of course, the people were to be allowed to think 
they had acted on their own initiative. Thus the Jewish 
Freemason Cremieux, whom the Revolution had raised to 
a place in the Provisional Government, declared in a 
speech to the crowd that on the ruins of the shattered 
monarchy " the people took for the eternal symbol of 
revolution ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ' " ; 2 it was only 
to the Freemasons themselves — this time a deputation 
of the Grand Orient, on the 24th of March — that he 
acknowledged the true origin of this device: " In all times 

1 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 282. 2 Memoir es de Caussidiere, i. 131. 



158 WORLD REVOLUTION 

and under all circumstances . . . Masonry ceaselessly- 
repeated these sublime words: ' Liberty Equality, Fra- 
ternity.' " 1 

In Germany as in France the principal leaders of the 
revolution — Hecker, Fickler, and Herwegh in Baden; 
Robert Blum in Saxony; Jacobi in Koenigsberg; von 
Gagern in Berlin — were all Freemasons who had been 
present at the aforesaid Masonic Congress in 1847. 

The 1848 Revolution was thus the second great 
attempt of illuminized Freemasonry to bring about a 
world conflagration. But there was one country where the 
movement proved completely abortive ; this was England. 
It is true that for many years the Chartist riots had 
created widespread anxiety, but the independent char- 
acter of the English people had hitherto always prevented 
them from modelling their agitations on continental prec- 
edents; and " the People's Charter," aiming rather at 
political reform than at social disintegration, was essen- 
tially a national product. That agitators working for the 
overthrow of the existing social system had introduced 
themselves into the movement as earlier they had found 
their way into Trade Unionism cannot be doubted ; it was 
this, however, that led to the final defeat of Chartism. 
When on the 13th of April 1848 a great demonstration 
was organized and a monster petition carried to Kenning- 
ton Common, London prepared itself for self-defence and 
prudent tradesmen put up their shutters in expectation of 
riots, but the insignificant proportions of the assembled 
mob, and the discovery that a great number of the signa- 
tures appended to the petition were fraudulent, covered 
the whole affair with ridicule and the dreaded explosion 
ended in smoke. The truth is that in a country where 
reforms were in progress revolution could make little 
headway, and the passing of the Ten Hours Bill in 1847 
had done much to quell agitation. Moreover, as we have 
already seen, the Co-operative movement had begun and 
was taking a strong hold on the imaginations of the British 
workers. It is not a little to the credit of our country that, 
whilst France continued to turn in a vicious circle of 
1 Deschamps, ii. 283. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 159 

abortive revolution, the English people, true to their tra- 
ditions, had struck out a fresh path entirely on their own 
initiative, which but for Socialist opposition might have 
led — and may yet lead — to the regeneration of the 
industrial system. 

Thus the situation stood at the end of 1848. Socialism 
in every conceivable form had been tried and found want- 
ing. It had failed in the form of peaceful experiments 
under Robert Owen, St-Simon, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, 
and Cabet; it had failed still more signally when the 
attempt was made to establish it by revolutionary 
methods. So we find that at this crisis a change came over 
the revolutionary movement, and Socialism, a derelict 
concern, was taken over by a company. What that com- 
pany was we shall see in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE INTERNATIONALE 

R61e of the Jews in Germany — German Social Democracy — Lassalle — 
Karl Marx — Engels — Russian Anarchy — Michel Bakunin — 
" The Working-men's Association " — Intrigues of Marx — The 
" Alliance of Social Democracy " — Bakunin and the " German Jew 
Company." 

In order to follow the new course on which the World 
Revolution now entered it is necessary to understand some- 
thing of the events that had taken place in Germany dur- 
ing the memorable year of 1848. 

We have already seen how the plan of a United Ger- 
many, with Prussia at its head, originating with Frederick 
the Great, had been carried on not only by his successor 
Frederick William II. but by the Illuminati, the Tugend- 
bund, and the Masonic Lodges. Under Frederick William 
III., Master of the Grand Lodge of Prussia, a further pact 
was concluded between Prussia and Freemasonry. 

The lodges judged that Prussia was of all the States of Europe 
the one most capable of carrying out their work, and they made 
it the pivot of their political action . . . the idea of a union 
under their domination never ceased to be the aim of all the 
lodges. 1 

But it seems that in Frederick William IV. they 
encountered a rebel. Without this hypothesis the agitation 
that took place in Berlin on the 18th of March 1848 is 
incomprehensible. Why should the King of Prussia have 
become the object of a hostile demonstration led to the 
cry of a" United Germany " in which Prussia was to be 
supreme? Why should he have rejected as " a crown of 
shame " (Schandkrone) the Imperial diadem subsequently 
Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 400. 
160 



THE INTERNATIONALE 161 

offered him by the National Assembly of Frankfurt and 
have pressed the claims of Austria to supremacy? May 
not the explanation be that Frederick William IV. had 
broken away from the traditions of the Hohenzollerns in 
refusing to ally himself with the subversive forces of which 
his predecessors had made such good use abroad, and that 
in preferring the claim of Austrian to Prussian supremacy 
his motive was reluctance to make himself the tool of the 
masons and to subscribe to their formula, as expressed by 
Mazzini: " Delenda est Austria " ? l The crown of shame 
which he declined to wear when offered to him by the 
Frankfurt Assembly under the President von Gagern, 
Freemason and Member of the Burschenschaft, was the 
Masonic crown worn by Frederick the Great and his two 
successors, offered by the Freemasons of France to the 
Duke of Brunswick and placed on the head of William I. 
in 1871. 

But there was yet another consideration that may 
well have weighed with Frederick William IV. Free- 
masonry was not the only subversive force at work in 
Germany. Behind Freemasonry, behind even the secret 
societies that made of Freemasons their adepts, another 
power was making itself felt, a power that ever since the 
Congress of Wilhelmsbad in 1782 had been slowly gaining 
ground — the power of the Jews. 

Until the middle of the nineteenth century the part 
played by the Jews in the revolutionary movement is more 
or less obscure. We have seen their mole-like working 
below ground during the first French Revolution, sus- 
pected by Prudhomme, we have seen them insinuating 
themselves into Masonic Lodges and secret societies, we 
have seen rich Jews financing the Haute Vente Romaine, 
and needy members of the tribe acting as agents of Nubius, 
but at the same time we have watched the building up of 
Capitalism by Jewish hands, and Jews in Russia support- 
ing the authority of the Czar. How are we to explain this 

1 Deschamps et Claudio Jannet, op. cit. iii. 245, quoting instructions 
of Mazzini published in the Journal des Debats for May 16, 1851, where 
the following passage occurs: " Delenda est Austria is the first and last 
word for action against that empire. . . . We must get hold of Prussia 
by exciting her military pride and her irascibility." 



162 WORLD REVOLUTION 

double r61e of the Jews throughout the social revolution? 
The common theory that as victims of oppression they 
embraced with fervour the doctrine of " Liberty and 
Equality " formulated by the lodges is completely refuted 
by Disraeli in an illuminating passage : 

" The Jews represent the Semitic principle; all that is 
spiritual in our nature. They are the trustees of tradition and 
the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and 
the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious 
doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of man." 
"Cosmopolitan fraternity" — or, as we should say to-day, 
" International Socialism " — Disraeli goes on to observe, " is a 
principle which, were it possible to act on it, would deteriorate 
the great races and destroy all the genius of the world. . . . The 
native tendency of the Jewish race, who are justly proud of their 
blood, is against the doctrine of the equality of man. They have 
also another characteristic, the faculty of acquisition. Although 
the European laws have endeavoured to prevent their obtaining 
property, they have nevertheless become remarkable for their 
accumulated wealth. Thus it will be seen that all the tendencies 
of the Jewish race are conservative. Their bias is to religion, 
property, and natural aristocracy. . . ." x 

In a word, then, the Jews are not genuine revolution- 
aries, but only throw themselves into revolutions for 
their own ends. Whilst professing to believe in Liberty and 
Equality they secretly deride such ideas, but make use of 
them to destroy existing governments in order to establish 
their own domination in religion, property, and power. 
Thus, according to Disraeli, it was they who played the 
principal part in preparing the 1848 conflagration: 

The influence of the Jews may be traced in the last out- 
break of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection 
takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion 
and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle, extirpation 
of the Jewish religion whether in the Mosaic or in the Christian 
form, the natural equality of men and the abrogation of prop- 
erty, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form provisional 
governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head 
of every one of them. The people of God co-operate with 
atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally them- 
selves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch 
the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all 
this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom 
1 Life of Lord George Bentinck, pp. 496, 497. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 163 

which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can 
no longer endure. 1 

It is a favourite ruse of the Jews to represent the 
Christians as their only enemies ; in reality the persecution 
of the Jews began long before the Christian era, nor has it 
since then been confined to countries where the Christian 
religion prevails. 

If Christendom is to be accused of ingratitude for the 
privilege of harbouring numbers of the chosen people in 
her midst, the pagan world showed itself quite equally 
ungrateful. Egyptians, Persians, and Assyrians kept them 
in complete subjection ; indeed, owing to their racial char- 
acteristics, it was found impossible even under the more 
liberal regime of Alexander the Great's successors to 
receive them into the community of nations. 

" The sullen obstinacy with which they maintained their 
peculiar rites and unsocial manners," writes Gibbon, " seemed to 
mark them out a distinct species of men, who boldly professed, 
or who faintly disguised, their implacable hatred to the rest of 
human kind." 2 

Here, then, rather than in Christian intolerance, may 
be found at least a partial explanation of the persecution 
of the Jews. Nor was persecution confined to one side only 
in the war of Semite against Gentile, for, given the oppor- 
tunity, the Jews showed themselves in no w r ay behind 
other races in cruelty. 

" From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius," Gibbon 
says again, " the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the 
dominion of Rome which repeatedly broke out in the most 
furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at 
the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the 
cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in 
treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives. ... In 
Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus 240,000; in 
Egypt a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims 
were sawed asunder, according to a precedent to which David 
had given the sanction of his example." 

Here follow details too horrible to transcribe. 3 
Under the humane rule of Antoninus Pius the Jews 

1 Life of Lord George Bentinck, pp. 497, 498, published in 1852. 

2 Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford University 
Press edition), ii. 3. 3 Ibid. ii. 83. 



164 WORLD REVOLUTION 

" assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious 
subjects." But " their irreconcilable hatred of mankind, 
instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, 
evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They em- 
braced every opportunity of overreaching the idolaters in 
trade. . . ." * 

Thus since the earliest times it is as the exploiter that 
the Jew has been known amongst his fellow-men of all 
races and creeds. Moreover, he has persistently shown 
himself ungrateful. As Gibbon again points out, in spite 
of the Jews' attachment to the Mosaic religion, their fore- 
fathers who first received the law given in thunder from 
Mount Sinai had " perpetually relapsed into rebellion 
against the visible majesty of their Divine King " — even 
though " the tides of the ocean and the course of the 
planets were suspended for the convenience of the Israel- 
ites," so that at last even the Almighty was led to declare: 
" How long will this people provoke me? " 2 

The truth is, then, that the Jews have always formed a 
rebellious element in every State, and not more so in those 
where they were persecuted than in those where they were 
allowed to dwell at peace. In fact, a careful study of their 
character throughout history shows that the Jew is well 
able to endure persecution with serenity provided he is 
permitted to carry on his natural avocations without 
hindrance, whilst on the other hand he finds it impossible 
to exist under a benevolent regime that limits his activities. 
Thus in China, where the Jews were welcomed and allowed 
all the privileges of good citizens, the race found life unen- 
durable because the Chinaman blandly declined to be 
exploited. The Jews therefore, finding it impossible to gain 
control of the principal wealth of the country, sought more 
congenial climes, and still to-day, outside the treaty ports, 
very few are to be found in China. 

On the other hand, Germany has always been the 
favourite resort of the Jews. If they object to persecution, 
how can we explain this fact? In no other country have 
they been so despised as in " the Fatherland," which does 
not recognize the Israelites amongst its progeny. We in 

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 85. * Ibid. ii. 5. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 165 

England, living under a regime of tolerance and " live and 
let live " unparalleled in any other land, can hardly con- 
ceive the bitterness, or even the existence, of Judenhetze. 
" The social peril is the Jew," was a phrase currrent in 
Germany; " the Jew," said Treitschke, " is our mis- 
fortune." Yet in spite of these amenities the Jew has 
found in Germany more than in any other land his natural 
home. 1 The reason may perhaps be found in the foregoing 
explanation of the Jewish point of view given by Disraeli. 
If indeed the Jew is a natural aristocrat, a disbeliever in 
the doctrine of equality, and an admirer of forceful govern- 
ment, he finds in Prussian Imperialism a system which, 
though oppressive of his own liberties, wins, nevertheless, 
his confidence and his respect. Here in the land of the 
jackboot and the spur he encounters few of those ener- 
vating theories of humanitarianism, those disintegrating 
concessions to democracy which he regards as " deteri- 
orating to the great races and the genius of the world." In 
a word, the Jew has always been inclined to regard Prussia 
as the best investment for his money. If only he could gain 
some measure of control over the great military machine 
his position in Europe was secure. 

It is thus that, as M. Claudio Jannet observes, " the 
Jews had always shown themselves the most active in the 
work of the unification of Germany," and he quotes from 
an article " devoted to the exaltation of Israel," in the 
Journal des Debats for November 5, 1879, the following 
remarkable words: 

In Germany from 1830 onwards the Jews play an important 
part: they are at the head of Young Germany. If German 
unity has been hastened by Prussian diplomacy and Prussian 
militarism, this work has been prepared, supported, and com- 
pleted by them. * 

Here, then, is the link between the apparently incompat- 
ible elements of Judaism and Imperial Germany. In spite 

1 Mr. Wickham Steed in The Hapsburg Monarchy (p. 172) relates that 
he once asked a learned Austrian Hebrew for an explanation of " the pro- 
German tendencies displayed by Ashkenazim Jews the world over. 
'German,' said this pundit, ' is the basis of our jargon, and, next to Pales- 
tine, Germany is the country which we regard as our home. Hence our 
sentimental leaning towards Germany.' " 

8 Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 417. 



166 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of Judenhetze the Jews have always had a peculiar affinity 
with the Prussians, so that to-day, after the ending of the 
Great War, we find the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung con- 
fidently declaring that there is " no contradiction between 
the desiderata of the Jews and German interests." l 

But before this alliance could be effected it was neces- 
sary for the Jews to establish their position in the State, 
and for this reason rather than from a spirit of revenge 
they threw themselves into the revolutionary movement. 
It was they who provided the driving force behind the 
masonic insurrection of 1848 in Germany, which started 
with the cry of Jewish emancipation and proclaimed as its 
ultimate purpose the supremacy of Prussia. This eventu- 
ality had been clearly foreseen by Disraeli, who in 1844 
declared through the mouth of Sidonia, the Jewish hero of 
Coningsby: 

That mighty revolution which is at this moment preparing 
in Germany and which will be in fact a greater and a second 
Reformation, and of which so little is as yet known in England, 
is entirely developing under the auspices of the Jews, who 
almost monopolize the professorial chairs of Germany. 

|The dialogue ends with the significant words: 

So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed 
by very different personages from what is imagined by those 
who are not behind the scenes. 2 

Four years after these words were written the revolu- 
tion broke out in Germany exactly as Disraeli had foretold, 
and if it did not assume the proportions he had anticipated, 
the year of 1848 inaugurated the emancipation of the Jews 
in Germany as surely as 1790 had inaugurated it in France. 

The accession to the throne of William L, " the pro- 
tector of masonry," and the ministry of Bismarck opened 
a fresh field to Jewish activities. For the new rulers of 
Prussia realized that the Jews could be very useful to 
their cause. Hohenzollern tradition had always recognized 
the utility of the despised race as agents. Frederick the 
Great had not disdained to employ a Jew named Ephraim 
for the purpose of coining false money 3 — probably the 

1 Date of January 30, 1919. 
8 Coningsby (Longman's edition), pp. 250-252. 
, * The Despatches of Earl Gower, edited by Oscar Browning (1885) , p. 385. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 167 

same Ephraim whom his successor, Frederick William II., 
had sent as a paid agitator to finance the tumults of the 
French Revolution. According to a strongly pro-Semitic 
writer in the Revue des Deux Monde s for 1880, Bismarck 
had recourse to the Jews for replenishing his war-chests. 
" The Jews," the same writer goes on to observe, " were 
the only people who were able to use Bismarck so that all 
Liberal reforms in Germany from Sadowa onwards carried 
out with the acquiescence of Bismarck turned to the profit 
of the Jews." l 

It was this date of 1866 which sealed the definite alli- 
ance between Prussianism and Jewry. Sadowa had proved 
the efficiency of the Prussian military machine, and hence- 
forth persecutors and persecuted were to march hand in 
hand to the conquest of world power. 

But already Bismarck had found a valuable ally in the 
person of the Jewish " Socialist " Lassalle. 

Ferdinand Lassalle, the son of a rich Hebrew merchant, 
was born in 1825. Tormented from his youth by hatred 
of the Christian races, whose blood even as a schoolboy 
he hoped to shed, Lassalle early embarked on a revolution- 
ary career. " Congenitally idle," dishonest, revengeful, an 
avowed atheist, 2 Lassalle declared himself a " revolution- 
ary by principle " who " would not hesitate at a Reign of 
Terror as a means to secure his ends." 3 

After the German Revolution of 1848, in which he 
played a leading part, Lassalle settled in Berlin, where he 
lived in splendour, not caring to drink wine at less than 
twenty or thirty marks a bottle, and entertaining his 
friends at gorgeous banquets. 4 

The source of Lassalle's wealth was the Hatzfeldt 
property, on which he lived complacently; indeed he 
frankly declared that he would willingly have married any 
woman who could bring him two or three million thalers 
of revenue. Such was the man who posed as the champion 
of the working-classes. 

But Bismarck had been quick to recognize the advan- 

1 " La Question des Juifs en Allemagne," by G. Valbert, in Revue des 
Deux Mondes, vol. xxxviii. p. 203. 

2 Ferdinand Lassalle, by George Brandes, pp. 10-12. 

* Ibid. pp. 44, 46. 4 Ibid. p. 88. 



168 WORLD REVOLUTION 

tage of harnessing the Jewish agitator to the Prussian 
Imperial machine, and before long we find Lassalle sinking 
his racial hatred against the Gentiles in favour of the worst 
oppressors of his kind. By 1859 he had become an ardent 
Prussian Jingoist, subscribing to the whole policy of Bis- 
marck, aiming at the absolute annihilation of Austria, 
" whose German provinces were to form an integral part 
of the one and indivisible German Republic " — a phrase 
strangely reminiscent of Anacharsis Clootz's vision of " the 
great Germany, the Universal Republic" — yet at the 
same time an enthusiastic propagandist for the Hohen- 
zollerns. 1 Under these circumstances it is not surprising 
that to the day of his death Bismarck always spoke of 
Lassalle with gratitude and respect. 

Even more valuable to the cause of German Imperial- 
ism was the founder of the creed now known as " Marxian 
Socialism." 

Karl Marx, the son of a Jewish lawyer whose real name 
was Mordechai, was born at Treves in 1818. In 1843 he 
settled in Paris to study economics, but his revolutionary- 
activities led to his being expelled from France, and in 1845 
he moved to Brussels, where, in collaboration with his 
German friend Friedrich Engels, he reorganized the Com- 
munist League, and a few years later (in 1847) published 
the now famous Communist Manifesto. Soon after this he 
returned to Germany, where he took an active part in the 
1848 Revolution, and in the same year we find him in 
Berlin at the head of a secret Communist society wielding 
the powers of life and death. 2 For this it is said that he was 
condemned to death, 3 but succeeded in escaping to Lon- 
don, where he settled down for the rest of his life and 
devoted himself to his great book Das Kapital. This pon- 
derous work has been described as the " Bible of the work- 
ing-classes." In reality the term, if employed at all, might 
be more aptly applied to his earlier production, The Com- 
munist Manifesto. To the working-man Das Kapital must 

1 Ferdinand Lassalle, by Edouard Bernstein, pp. 47, 62. 

2 Edmond Laskine, V Internationale et le Pangermanisme (quoting 
Nettlau's Bakunin), p. 56. 

3 Louis Enault, Paris brule par la Commune, p. 23; Beaumont Vassy, 
La Commune de Paris, p. 9. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 169 

be completely unintelligible, for even Marxians of the- 
educated class are totally divided as to its meaning. But 
to that small minority amongst the working-men that 
composes " the revolutionary proletariat " the meaning of 
The Communist Manifesto, described by Marxians as " the 
Charter of Freedom of the Workers of the World," is 
clear enough. Here are all the diatribes against the 
bourgeoisie and capitalists with which Marat, Hebert, and 
Babeuf had familiarized the people, and here in plain 
language are set forth the doctrines laid down in the code 
of Weishaupt — the abolition of inheritance, of marriage 
and the family, of patriotism, of all religion, the institution 
of the community of women, and the communal education 
of children by the State. This, divested of its trappings, 
is the real plan of Marxian Socialism, which, enveloped in 
the algebraical phraseology of Das Kapital, is less easy to 
discover. 

In neither work had Marx originated anything. His 
theory of " wage-slavery " was, as we have seen, current 
during the first French Revolution, and had been con- 
tinued by Vidal and Pecqueur, to whom the idea of the 
socialization of mines, railways, and transport was also 
due ; his Communism was that of Babeuf, of Louis Blanc, 
and Cabet; his Internationalist schemes had been pro- 
pounded by Weishaupt and Clootz, as also his attacks 
upon religion; his doctrine that " Labour is the source of 
all wealth" had been set forth by such early English 
writers as Locke, Petty, Adam Smith, and later by Robert 
Owen; 1 even his theory of surplus value was not his own 
but had been formulated with some vagueness by Owen, 
more definitely by the Chartists in their organ ( The Poor 
Man's Guardian) in 1835, seven years before Marx began 
to write. 2 When we have traced these ideas to their original 

i Sargant, Life of Robert Owen, pp. 170, 441-442. " The poor and 
working-classes," Owen wrote, " create all the wealth which the rich 
possess." 

2 Marx's plagiarisms are admitted even by his admirer the Syndicalist 
Sorel. " The new Marxian school," he writes, " perceived with a certain 
stupefaction that pretended inventions had been put down to the account 
of the master which originated with his predecessors or were even common- 
places at the time when The Communist Manifesto was drawn up. Accord- 
ing to an author who ranks amongst well-informed people, ' . . . the 
accumulation (of capital in the hands of a few individuals) is one of the 



170 WORLD REVOLUTION 

sources, what then is left of Marx's system? Absolutely 
nothing but the form in which it was conveyed. 

Werner Sombart has remarked on the peculiar aptitude 
of the Jewish race for making use of waste product. The 
Jews, it appears, are the chiffoniers par excellence of the 
world. This then was the particular art of Marx, who, 
as we know, collected all the materials for his book on 
Capital in the reading-room of the British Museum. It was 
there that he found his whole system ready to hand. Can 
we not see him, like some veteran Jewish rag-and-bone 
merchant, going over the accumulated debris of past 
social schemes, passing through his fingers the dry bones 
of dead philosophies, the shreds and tatters of worn-out 
doctrines, the dust and ashes of exploded theories, and 
with the practical cunning of the German and the Hebrew 
brain shrewdly recognizing the use that might be made 
of all this lumber by skilfully welding it into one subver- 
sive whole ? 

Marx then was an impostor from the beginning. Posing 
as the prophet of a new gospel, he was in reality nothing 
but a plagiarist, and a plagiarist without the common 
honesty to pay tribute to the sources whence he drew his 
material. For after pillaging freely from all the earlier 
Socialists Marx dismisses them with a sneer. For Owen, 
Fourier, and Cabet — the " Utopian Socialists " as he 
describes them — Marx has nothing but a light contempt, 
because they " consistently endeavour to suppress the 
class struggle and to reconcile antagonisms," l whilst 
amongst " the Republican asses of 1848 " 2 Louis Blanc is 
referred to as " a high priest of the Socialist synagogue." 8 

But it was for Proudhon that Marx reserved his bitter- 
great discoveries of Marx, one of the finds of which he was the proudest.' 
(A. Metin, Le Socialisme en Angleterre, p. 191). With all due deference to 
this notable academician this thesis was known to the man in the street 
(courait les rues) before Marx had ever written anything, and had become 
a dogma in the Socialist world at the end of the reign of Louis Philippe. 
There are a quantity of Marxian theses of the same kind " (Reflexions sur la 
violence, pp. 173, 174). 

1 Communist Manifesto (edited in pamphlet form by Socialist Labour 
Party), p. 27. 

2 Letter from Marx to Engels, July 7, 1868, Briefwechsel zwischen 
Friedrich Engels und Karl Marx (published by Dietz of Stuttgart), iv. 65. 

3 Marx, La Lutte des classes. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 171 

est animosity, as Bakunin the Anarchist, whilst still under 
the spell of Marx, described in an illuminating passage: 

His vanity . . . has no bounds, a veritable Jew's vanity. 
. . . This vanity, already very great, has been considerably 
increased by the adulation of his friends and disciples. Very 
personal, very jealous, very touchy, and very vindictive, like 
Jehovah the God of his people, Marx will not surfer that one 
should recognize any other God but himself; what do I say? 
that one should even render justice to another Socialist writer 
or worker in his presence. Proudhon, who has never been a God, 
but who was certainly a great revolutionary thinker, and who 
rendered immense services to the development of Socialist ideas, 
became for this reason the bete noire of Marx. To praise Proud- 
hon in his presence was to cause him a mortal offence worthy 
of all the natural consequences of his enmity; and these con- 
sequences are at first hatred, then the foulest calumnies. Marx 
has never recoiled before falsehood, however odious, however 
perfidious it might be, when he thought he could make use of it 
without too great danger for himself against those who had 
the misfortune to incur his wrath. 1 

Such was the personal character of the man represented 
to us to-day as the saviour of the working-classes. How 
far was he consistent in his championship of the " prole- 
tariat " ? Here we come to the greatest irony of all in the 
career of Marx. 

It has been seen that the principal theory proclaimed 
by Marx was the necessity for the overthrow of Capital- 
ism, a system founded on the exploitation of the workers by 
whom all wealth is produced. Yet probably few of his 
followers have troubled to inquire whence Marx derived 
his own means of livelihood. We know that throughout 
his whole life he never did a stroke of manual labour — the 
only form of work that Marxians recognize as " pro- 
ductive " — and that his writings did not bring him in 
sufficient to maintain himself and his family in comfort. 
How then did Marx live? On the bounty of Friedrich 
Engels. 

Engels has been described by the Socialist Guillaume, 
Secretary of the Internationale, as " a rich manufacturer 
accustomed to regard workmen as machine fodder and 

1 Michael Bakunin, eine Biographie, by Dr. Max Nettlau, i. 69, quoting 
letter from Bakunin in 1873 to the " Freres de 1' Alliance en Espagne." 



172 WORLD REVOLUTION 

cannon fodder." * His large fortune had been made out 
of Lancashire cotton spinning, and it was he who supple- 
mented the meagre earnings of his collaborator. 2 So we 
have the ludicrous situation of these two German oppo- 
nents of Capitalism and industrial exploitation living com- 
placently on capital accumulated from the exploitation of 
English workers! How in the face of this fact can any one 
retain a lingering belief in the genuineness of Marx's 
Socialism? Indeed the more we study Marx's writings — 
not those intended for publication, but the real expression 
of his opinions contained in his private correspondence — 
the more the conviction is borne in upon our minds that 
Marx never believed a word of the doctrines he professed, 
but that to him Socialism was merely a system to be made 
use of for his own ends. 

It was thus that with the rise of German Social Democ- 
racy under the aegis of Lassalle, Marx, and Engels true 
Socialism — that is to say French Socialism — died, and 
its dry bones were taken over by the company which 
Bakunin described as " the German Jew Company," the 
" red bureaucracy." From this moment the vein of ideal- 
ism that had run through the earlier stages of the revolu- 
tionary movement ceases entirely, and Socialism reduced 
from a Utopian dream to a cut-and-dried system, practical 
and unaspiring as the prospectus of a Germany company 
promoter, is seen in all its heartless materialism, its ruth- 
less Prussianism, as it had first appeared in the code of 
Weishaupt. 

Meanwhile Illuminism had continued to develop along 
the line of Anarchy. No longer represented merely by the 
visionary Proudhon but by the fierce Slavonic force of 
Bakunin, Anarchy for the first time showed itself under its 
true colours. Hitherto even such anarchic writers as 
Marat and Hebert had professed to entertain some scheme 
of reconstruction. Proudhon had formulated an elemen- 
tary theory of Syndicalism with which to replace the 
existing order; it was left to Bakunin to advocate the 

1 Guillaume, Documents de l' Internationale, in. 153. 

2 Reminiscences, by H. M. Hyndman, pp. 278, 279. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 173 

system of Anarchy as a permanent institution, not as a 
transitory period necessary to traverse on the way to a 
regenerated social order. 

Michael Bakunin (or Bakounine), born in 1814, 
belonged to the Russian nobility, and at the age of twenty 
entered the artillery school at St. Petersburg. He passed 
his examinations brilliantly, but, always an incorrigible 
idler, spent most of his time, when quartered in a pro- 
vincial town, lying on his bed in his dressing-gown. 1 
Before long he left the army, but took up no other pro- 
fession, preferring to dabble in philosophy and to meddle 
in his friends' affairs, one of whom, Bielinski, driven to 
exasperation, wrote: " I should be capable of throwing him 
down and stamping on him with sabots." 2 Even his 
intimes and fellow- Anarchists Ogareff and Herzen had little 
good to say of him. " I infinitely regret having nourished 
this reptile ..." wrote the former; " he is a man with 
whom it repels me to shake hands; " whilst Herzen 
described him briefly as a man " with talent but a detest- 
able character and a mauvais sujet." 3 Incidentally 
Bakunin had applied the same description to Herzen. 

Embroiled in all these private quarrels, too indolent to 
do any honest work, Bakunin ended by taking up the pro- 
fession of a revolutionary — a career which, like many 
another of his kind, he found both easy and remunerative. 

By dint of perpetually borrowing money from his 
friends, Bakunin was spared from exerting himself even in 
a literary way, and during the course of seven years, 1840- 
1847, his entire output of work consisted in six newspaper 
articles. Meanwhile his revolutionary energies found their 
vent in talk — endless, discursive talk — with his fellow- 
revolutionaries, lasting frequently all through the night, 
to the accompaniment of excellent Russian tea and sand- 
wiches. It is thus that in 1847 we have already found him 
discussing with Proudhon and SazanofI the prospect of 
" the universal revolution." 

At this period Bakunin seems not to have formulated 
any definite revolutionary creed, and thus, although he 

1 Correspondence de Michel Bakounine, published by Michel Drago- 
manov (1896), p. 7. 2 Ibid. p. 8. « Ibid. p. 13. 



174 WORLD REVOLUTION 

vaguely regarded Communism as " logically impossible," 
he was quite content to throw in his lot with the Com- 
munists of Paris, amongst them his future antagonist 
Marx. Twenty-nine years later Bakunin described their 
first meeting in these words: ' 

Marx and I are old acquaintances. I met him for the first 
time in Paris in 1844. . . . We were rather good friends. He 
was much more advanced than I was, as to-day he still is, not 
more advanced but incomparably more learned than I am. I 
knew nothing then of political economy, I had not yet got 
rid of metaphysical abstractions, and my Socialism was only 
that of instinct. He, though younger than I, was already an 
atheist, a learned materialist, and a thoughtful Socialist. It 
was precisely at this epoch that he elaborated the first founda- 
tions of his present system. We saw each other fairly often, 
for I respected him very much for his knowledge and for his 
devotion, passionate and serious though always mingled with 
personal vanity, to the cause of the proletariat, and I eagerly 
sought his conversation, which was always instructive and witty 
when it was not inspired by petty hatred, which, alas! occurred 
too frequently. There was never, however, any frank intimacy 
between us. Our temperaments did not permit of it. He 
called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right; I called him 
a vain man, perfidious and crafty, and I was right also. 1 

It is easy to read between the lines here, to see how 
from the beginning Bakunin was simply a tool in the hands 
of Marx. The shrewd German Jew clearly recognized the 
value of the Russian as a huge dynamic force to be made 
use of and then cast aside when it had served his purpose. 

Before the Revolution of 1848, Bakunin, like Marx, was 
expelled from Paris, but after the explosion of February 
he contrived to return and join himself to the extreme 
party, with whom he passed his nights preaching revolu- 
tion, equality of salaries, the levelling down of all classes 
in the name of Equality. 

But Caussidiere and Flocon, exasperated by his 
tirades, finally sent him off on a mission to the Slavs, in the 
hope of his breaking his neck. "What a man! What a 
man! " said Caussidiere. " The first day of a revolution 
he is a treasure, the second he is only good to shoot." 

1 Michael Bakunin, eine Biographie, by Dr. Max Nettlau, i. 69. (This 
work is unpublished, and only 50 copies were reproduced in lithograph 
from manuscript. One of these is in the British Museum.) 



THE INTERNATIONALE 175 

Herzen, who records this expression of opinion, adds that 
Caussidiere himself needed shooting the day before the 
revolution began. 1 

Bakunin's journey eastwards effectively rid France of 
his presence for many years; for after taking part in the 
revolutionary outbreaks in Russia, Prague, and finally in 
Dresden, he was arrested at Chemnitz and imprisoned first 
at Altenburg, then at Koenigstein, then taken in chains to 
Prague, transferred to Olmiitz, where he remained chained 
to the wall for five months, and last of all given over to the 
Russian Government, by which he was imprisoned in the 
fortress of Peter and Paul in May 1851. Two months later 
Count Orloff came to visit him and urged him to write a 
confession of his misdeeds to the Emperor as to a father 
confessor. Bakunin complied, but Nicholas I. on reading 
the document observed briefly: " He is a brave boy with 
a lively wit, but he is a dangerous man and must be kept 
under lock and key." Accordingly Bakunin remained in 
prison, for a time in St. Peter and Paul, later at Schlussel- 
bourg, where he remained three years, during which time 
he contracted scurvy and all his teeth fell out. 

On the accession of Alexander II. a fresh demand was 
made for a reprieve, but the new Emperor, on being shown 
Bakunin's " confession " to his predecessor, remarked, 
"I see not the least repentance in this letter," and sent 
him to Siberia. 

Here Bakunin spent four quite pleasant years ; free to 
move about, he actually, for the only time in his life, took 
up a little work, and finally married a Polish girl who 
11 shared all his aspirations." " I am completely happy," 
he wrote in 1860. " Ah! how sweet it is to live for others, 
especially when it is for a charming woman." 

But peace and quiet could not content the restless 
spirit of Bakunin for long. The revolutionary fever was on 
him and he craved to be back again at his old game of 
agitation. The emancipation of the serfs, which took place 
in the following year, stirred him but mildly; in this 
immense concession to the cause of liberty he saw only a 
means of shaking the Imperial authority, and at the end 

1 Correspondance de Bakouninc, pp. 41, 42. 



176 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of this same year he succeeded in escaping from Siberia, 
whence he travelled across Japan and America to London. 
Here Bakunin, received with open arms by Ogareff and 
Herzen, found himself once more in a congenial atmos- 
phere. Surrounded by conspirators of all nationalities he 
was able to get to work on fresh plots, on schemes for 
stirring up the Poles, and organizing revolutions every- 
where. Herzen has thus described his activities at this 
crisis : 

Bakunin renewed his youth; he was in his element. It is 
not only the rumbling of insurrection, the noise of the clubs, the 
tumult in the streets and public places, nor even the barricades 
that made up his happiness ; he loved also the movement of the 
day before, the work of preparation, that life of agitation, yet 
at the same time rendered continuous by conferences — those 
sleepless nights, those parleyings and negotiations, rectifications, 
chemical ink, cyphers, and signs agreed upon beforehand. 

And Herzen, who took revolution more seriously, adds 
that Bakunin " excited himself exactly as if it were a 
question of preparing a Christmas tree — that annoyed 
me. l 

It is easy to understand that to a man of Bakunin 's 
temperament an existence of this kind — maintained as 
ever by the charity of his friends — was infinitely prefer- 
able to a life of honest toil such as most human beings are 
condemned to lead. Indeed in the above description we 
find the key to many an agitator's career, and we cannot 
wonder that as long as revolution provides constitutional 
idlers with a lucrative and amusing profession the world 
should continue to toss on the waves of unrest. 

I have dwelt at some length on the character and career 
of Bakunin because more than any one he seems to me to 
embody the spirit of Anarchy — a spirit widely different, 
indeed diametrically opposed to that of State Socialism. 
The Anarchist is undoubtedly a more amiable being than 
the State Socialist; instead of wishing to cut every one 
down to the same pattern, he desires, on the contrary, to 
give all men unbounded liberty to develop along whatever 
lines they please — the idler should be free to idle and live 
on other men's labour, the drunkard to drink himself into 
1 Correspondance de Bakounine, p. 67. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 177 

a condition of maudlin imbecility, the murderer to cut 
throats until he wearies of the pastime, the thief to con- 
tinue helping himself to other people's goods until he has 
accumulated enough to satisfy him. Exaggerated Indi- 
vidualism is the keynote of his system: liberty, not 
equality, is his goal. His belief in the amiability of human 
nature endows him with a bonhomie not to be found 
amongst the Communists, who regard their fellow-men as 
creatures to be dragooned into obedience to the dictates of 
the State, by which of course they mean themselves. The 
difference between the two is that which exists between the 
amiable eccentric who, believing in the innate benevolence 
of the entire animal kingdom, wishes to open all the cages 
in a menagerie and leave the wild beasts free to roam about 
the world, and the lion-tamer who loves at the crack of his 
whip to see king of beasts and performing poodle alike 
meekly rotating on a merry-go-round. 

It is easy, therefore, to understand that Anarchists, far 
more than their dour opponents the State Socialists, have 
succeeded in endearing themselves to the people with 
whom they came in contact. The vision of " the Russian 
giant " in his big hat was remembered affectionately long 
afterwards by the inhabitants of Lugano, where Bakunin 
spent some years, and later on his disciple Prince Kropot- 
kine made himself beloved in London drawing-rooms. 

The truth is that to the Western mind such beings are 
impossible of comprehension. Deceived by the outward 
urbanity of the Anarchists, it fails to realize that beneath 
the smiling surface there lurks a tiger ready to be aroused 
by the smell of blood; it cannot believe that people can 
really exist who love violence for its own sake, who crave 
to burn and murder and destroy. 

But in Eastern Europe creatures of this kind have 
always existed, and we find the exact prototype of Bakunin 
in the Baron Ungern von Sternberg who had pursued a 
career of crime at the beginning of the century in his island 
of Dago. The favourite pastime of this robber baron, who 
had vowed hatred to the whole human race, the Emperor 
in particular, was to lure ships to their destruction by 
means of a lighthouse installed in the tower of his castle. 



178 WORLD REVOLUTION 

As soon as a vessel was on the point of wrecking, the baron 
descended to the beach, embarked secretly with several clever 
and determined men whom he kept to help him in his nocturnal 
expeditions ; he received the foreign mariners, finished them off 
in the darkness instead of rescuing them, and after having 
strangled them he pillaged their ship; all this less by cupidity 
than by pure love of evil, by a disinterested zeal for destruction. 
Disbelieving in everything, and above all in justice, he regarded 
moral and social disorder as the closest analogy to the state of 
man here below and civil and political virtues as harmful 
chimeras, since they only oppose Nature without subduing it. 1 

This was precisely the creed of Bakunin, who, if he had 
lived a hundred years earlier, before brigandage had been 
sanctified by the revolutionary Socialists and Anarchists 
of France, would doubtless have found a vent for his 
energies on the same lines as the robber baron, instead of 
masquerading as a champion of the people. 

Such a dynamic force as Bakunin provided could not 
fail to be of immense value to the revolutionary move- 
ment, and it was thus that, during his stay in London, 
Marx — who incidentally had taken the opportunity of 
Bakunin' s incarceration at Koenigstein in 1850 to declare 
that he was an agent of the Russian Government — came 
round to his lodgings and assured him that he had not 
intended to calumniate him in the past. 

The fact is that Marx was now very busy at the great 
scheme of his life and needed all the co-operation he could 
muster — this scheme was the organization of the famous 
" Internationale." 

In order to understand the origin of this association 
it is necessary to go back two years, that is to say to 1862, 
the year of the Great Exhibition in the Cromwell Road. 

Now whilst Anarchists and State Socialists were striv- 
ing for the mastery over the revolutionary movement, the 
working-men of France had begun dimly to realize that 
if they hoped to improve their lot it was to themselves 
they must look for salvation and not to the theorists who 
had hitherto led them to disaster. Accordingly in 1862 a 
deputation of French working-men was sent to England on 
a visit to the Great Exhibition to study technical questions 
1 La Russie en 1839, by Astolphe de Custine, i. 175. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 179 

connected with labour, and during the course of their stay 
they had the opportunity to observe the utility of Trade 
Unions in protecting the interests of the workers. This 
system was denied to them, for the " coalitions of working- 
men " suppressed in the first French Revolution still 
remained under the ban, and the Frenchmen now resolved 
to form a new association on their own account. Although 
imbued with the " mutualist " theories of Proudhon their 
programme was in no way revolutionary, and they hoped 
by pacific means to bring about a reorganization of the 
industrial system. An interesting little book which has 
now become very rare, The Secret History of the Inter- 
national, published in 1872, had admirably described the 
attitude towards the social problem of two of these men, 
Tolain and Fribourg, bronze-workers of Paris who visited 
London in 1864. 

They talked of peace, of study, of arrangement, of associa- 
tion. ... A better knowledge of each other, a more frequent 
interchange of thought, a clearer view of the great laws which 
govern rise and fall in wages, and a means of stretching friendly 
hands from town to town, from sea to sea in case of need — 
these are the ends we have in view, they urged, not secret plots 
and wine-shop agitations. 1 

The path of peaceful progress was paved the more 
smoothly by the action of Napoleon III., who in May of 
this same year repealed the laws against Trade Unions and 
replaced them by a fresh edict threatening with punishment 
any concerted attempt, either on the part of employers or 
employed, to paralyse industry by malicious strikes or 
lock-outs. This year of 1864, as Mermeix points out, was 
thus " a great date in the history of the workers in France," 
for the new law " at last establishes equality of rights 
between the masters and the working-men," and if firmly 
applied should have accustomed them to respect each 
other. " It would not have permitted the method of 
1 direct action,' which is nothing but a series of fraudulent 
manoeuvres concerted and carried out." 2 There was, 
therefore, at this moment less reason than ever to have 

1 The Secret History of the International, by Onslow Yorke, alias 
Hepworth Dixon (1872). _ 

2 Mermeix (G. Terrail), Le Syndicalisme contre le socialisme, pp. 53-56. 



180 WORLD REVOLUTION 

recourse to violent methods for the redress of social evils. 
But the work of the World Revolutionists is always to 
strangle true reforms at their birth, and the new liberty 
accorded to the workers proved the signal for fresh agi- 
tation on their part. In the " Working-men's Association" 
they saw the very instrument they needed for carrying out 
their plans. Karl Marx was then in London and frequently 
to be found in the clubs and cafes where the working-men 
forgathered. " In evil hour," says the Secret History, 
" the Paris bronziers met this learned and unsmiling Jew." 
From that moment the cause of the workers was lost. 

It was not that Marx immediately introduced himself 
into the movement. On the contrary, at the meeting in 
St. Martin's Hall on September 28, 1864, when the " Inter- 
nationale " was definitely founded, Marx played no part 
at all. " I was present," he wrote to Engels, " only as a 
dumb personage on the platform." But he was named, 
nevertheless, a member of the sub-committee, the other 
members being Mazzini's secretary — a Polish Jew named 
Wolff — Le Lubez, a French Freemason, Cremer, the 
secretary of the English Masons' Union, and Weston, the 
Owenite. At the first meeting of this committee Wolff 
placed before it the statutes of Mazzini's working-men's 
associations, proposing them as the basis of the new 
association; Le Lubez suggested amendments described 
by Marx as " perfectly childish." " I was firmly resolved," 
he wrote, " not to leave a single line if possible of all their 
balderdash." In a few weeks he had succeeded in estab- 
lishing his authority. " My propositions were all accepted 
by the commission ; they only insisted on the introduction 
in the Preamble of the statutes, of two phrases on duties 
and rights, and on truth, morality, and justice; but I 
placed them in such a way that it can do no harm." l 
The " provisional statutes of the Internationale " thus 
amended by Marx were then sent from London to Paris in 
the following November and accepted by the members 
of the association. 

In all these manoeuvres Marx had again displayed his 

James Guillaume, Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste, p, 9 (Librairie Armand 
Collin, 1915). 



THE INTERNATIONALE 181 

skill in making use of the ideas of others to serve his own 
purpose. Just as he had succeeded in appropriating the 
theories of earlier Socialists and passing them off as his 
own invention, so he now contrived to gain the reputation 
of having founded the Internationale, an achievement we 
shall find habitually attributed to him by Marxian writers. 
But on this point we have further the conclusive evidence 
of James Guillaume, a Swiss member of the association and 
its principal chronicler: 

It is not true that the Internationale was the creation of 
Karl Marx. He remained completely outside the preparatory 
work that took place from 1862 to 1864. He joined the Inter- 
nationale at the moment when the initiative of the English and 
French workmen had just created it. Like the cuckoo he came 
and laid his egg in a nest which was not his own. His plan 
from the first day was to make the great working-men's organ- 
ization the instrument of his personal views. 1 

But Marx was not the only intriguer to introduce him- 
self into the movement. Monsieur Drumont has admirably 
described the manner in which middle-class theorists, 
entirely unsympathetic to the workers, succeeded in 
capturing the association: 

In its origin the French Internationale was far from being 
revolutionary, from seeking disturbances in the streets, from 
liking insurrection for insurrection's sake. The Emperor 
Napoleon III., the only sovereign since 1789 who had sincerely 
interested himself in the working-classes, who understood their 
sufferings and desired to improve their lot, had followed the 
progress of the new association with sympathy. ... It was 
only after a time that bourgeois agitators could make the Inter- 
nationale deviate from its goal. This fact is ceaselessly repeated 
in everything the proletarians attempt. The bourgeois Capitalist 
exploits them as workers; when they deliberate together in 
order to consider means for improving their lot, the bourgeois 
Revolutionary, that is to say the needy bourgeois who wants 
to become a Capitalist, always finds a way of introducing him- 
self into these associations and of making them serve for the 
satisfaction of his ambitions. 2 

It was through the secret societies that these bourgeois 
elements found their way into the new association. 

1 James Guillaume, Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste, p. 11 (Librairie Armand 
Collin, 1915). - — - - 

a fidouard Drumont, La Fin d'un monde, p. 127. 



182 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Fribourg himself has declared that " the Internationale 
everywhere found support in Freemasonry,' ' 1 that is to 
say, in the lodges of the Grand Orient, and M. Louis 
finault records that " in March 1865 all the secret associa- 
tions of Europe and North America were merged in the 
1 International Association of Working-men,' ' The Mari- 
anne,' the ' Freres de la Republique ' of Lyons and 
Marseilles, the Fenians of Ireland, the innumerable secret 
societies of Russia and Poland, the remains of the Car- 
bonari, joined up with the new society. This fusion was 
made. 1 ' j 

The Internationale, though itself an open and avowed 
association, thus became through its absorption of these 
existing secret organizations a huge semi-secret society — 
that is to say, it formed the outer shell that covered a 
ramification of conspiracies alien to the ideas of its founders 
and of which the secrets were known only to its middle- 
class directors. 3 

The anti-religious policy adopted by the Internationale 
was the work of these secret influences. In this same 
year of 1865 a great students' Congress took place in 
Liege, at which Fontaine declared: 

^What we wish for, we revolutionaries and socialists, is 
physical, moral, and intellectual development of the human race. 
Note that I say physical first, intellectual afterwards. We wish, 
in the moral order, by the annihilation of all prejudices of religion 
and the Church, to arrive at the negation of God and at free 
examination. 4 

And Laf argue, after chanting the praises of " our 
grand master Proudhon " at a further sitting of the Con- 
gress held in Brussels, had ended with the cry: " War on 
God! Hatred towards God! That is progress! We must 
shatter Heaven like a vault of a paper! " 5 

A number of these men — proudly claimed by the 
Freemasons as members of their Order — crowded into 

1 L' Association Internationale des Travailleurs, bv\E. E. Fribourg (1871), 
p. 31. 

* Louis finault, Paris brtile par la Commune (1871), p. 24. 

.' P. Deschamps on this account describes the Internationale as a 
secret society {op. cit. ii. 541), and Heckethorn includes it in his work on 
" Secret Societies." 

4 P. Deschamps, op. cit. ii. 527a. * Ibid. p. 5286. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 183 

the Internationale, which thus became permeated with the 
spirit of Illuminism. At a meeting of the association 
Garibaldi, venturing to propose that " faith in God should 
be adopted by the Congress," met with a stony silence, 
and was obliged to qualify the suggestion with the expla- 
nation that by the religion of God he meant the religion of 
Reason — the worship of the goddess of Reason, he added 
later, such as was practised in the French Revolution. 1 

The working-men took no part in these blasphemies. 
When Jaclard declared that outside Atheism there was no 
hope for man — " To be religious is to be ridiculous " — 
Fribourg, the bronze-worker, Chaudey, and Lemonnier 
" combated these views in the name of liberal Paris and of 
liberal France." " For," as the author of the Secret His- 
tory truly adds, " these are not so much the views of work- 
ing-men as of professors and philosophers." Indeed the 
vine-growers of Neuchatal so little understood the aims of 
the Internationale as to declare naively that the principal 
article of their branch of the association should be : "Every 
vine-dresser must have a Bible and not neglect divine 
service " — a suggestion received with derision by their 
middle-class directors. 2 

It is difficult to write of these things calmly. For to 
deceive the people, whose simple faith and lack of educa- 
tion prevent them seeing whither they are being led, is as 
cowardly as to guide a blind man into a ditch. Yet this 
is what the exploiters of the Internationale did for the 
working-men. The identity of these middle-class inter- 
lopers who assembled at the Second Congress of the 
association in Lausanne in 1867 has thus been given by the 
author of the Secret History; 

One delegate from Belgium, six delegates from England, 
seventeen from France, six from Germany, two from Italy, and 
thirty-one from Switzerland, came together in a room of the 
Casino at Lausanne. Three only of the deputies from England 
were of English name. England was mainly represented by two 
German tailors and a French fiddle-maker. Germany was 
represented by two doctors, one professor, an hotel-keeper, a 
machinist, and a gentleman of no profession that he cared to 

1 Documents et souvenirs de l' Internationale, by James Guillaume, ii. 
47-49. 2 Ibid. i. 248. 



184 WORLD REVOLUTION 

name. Italy was represented by two doctors, Stamfa and 
Tomasi. Four professors, three journalists, and a commercial 
agent represented the toilers of Zurich and Geneva. Observe 
that here is not a gathering of the craftsmen, bent on study of 
the questions which affect them in their hours of work and in 
their rate of pay, but an assembly of middle-class dreamers and 
theorists. 

. The " English " deputies here referred to are further 
described by James Guillaume. The tailor Eccarius, 
friend and disciple of Marx, was "a long personage with 
an unkempt beard, hair falling carelessly over his eyes, 
always stuffing his nose with tobacco " ; the other German 
tailor, Lessner, was " the true type of bearded democrat 
with burning eyes " — " his role seemed to be to protest 
perpetually. During discussion Eccarius speaks slowly 
with an imperturbable phlegm; Lessner cannot contain 
himself and exhales his passionate soul in a torrent of 
violent and bitter words; before an unintelligent con- 
tradictor Eccarius shrugs his shoulders, Lessner bounds 
about and seems to wish to devour his adversary." 
Eugene Dupont, the Frenchman and future president of 
the Congress, belonged to quite a different type — "a 
ypung man of thirty resembling all young men with a 
moustache." " I remark in him," adds Guillaume, " noth- 
ing but an innocent fondness for punning." * Another 
London member, this time an Englishman, not present at 
this Congress, was an eccentric millionaire named Cowell 
Stepney, " deaf as a post," an enthusiastic Communist 
and member of the General Council. 2 

The International Association of Working-men had 
become a farce. In vain the real workmen from Paris had 
protested at the First Congress in Geneva against the 
invasion of their ranks by men who were not manual 
workers, declaring that if the workers' Congress " were to 
be composed in greater part by economists, journalists, 
lawyers, and employers, the thing would be ridiculous and 
would annihilate the Association." 3 Marx, who in his 
" Preamble of the Provisional Rules of the Internationale" 
had himself declared that " the emancipation of the work- 

1 Guillaume, Documents, etc., i. 30, 31. a Ibid. i. 80, 139, note. 

• Ibid. Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste, p. 24. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 185 

ing-classes must be brought about by the working-classes 
themselves," waxed indignant at what he described as 
" the manoeuvre of Tolain and Fribourg " in " invoking 
the principle that only working-men can represent 
working-men," and the French workmen's motion was 
defeated by 25 votes to 20. 1 

Marx indeed did not conceal his contempt for the 
originators of the Internationale 

" The working-men, particularly those from Paris," he 
wrote a month after the Congress to his young Jewish friend 
Dr. Kugelmann, " belong as luxury workers (i.e. engravers on 
bronze) no doubt strongly to the old filth (dem alten Dreck 
angehoren.) Ignorant, vain, pretentious, garrulous, swollen 
with pomposity, they were on the point of spoiling everything, 
having rushed to the Congress in numbers which in no way 
corresponded to that of their adherents. In the report I shall 
clandestinely rap them over the knuckles." 2 

As M. Guillaume truly observes: " All Marx is already 
in this letter." 

The English delegates fared no better at his hands, for 
in the following year we find him writing in this strain to 
Engels : . \ ' ' 

I shall go personally to the next Congress at Brussels so as 
to give the coup de grdce to those asses of Proudhoniens . . . 
in the official Report of the General Council — for in spite of 
their efforts the Parisian chatterboxes have not been able to 
prevent our re-election — I shall give them the stick. The 
swinehounds amongst the English trade unionists who thought 
we were going too far will not catch us up easily. . . . Things 
are advancing, and at the first revolution, which is perhaps' 
nearer than it seems, we, that is to say, you and I, will have 
this powerful instrument in our hands. . . . We can really be 
well satisfied! 3 

In the light of these passages it is amusing to find 
one of Marx's admirers explaining that " the essence of 

1 Guillaume, Karl Marx, pan-Germanisle, p. 25. 

2 Letter from Marx to Kugelmann on October 9, 1866, V Internationale 
et le Pan-Germanisme, by Edmond Laskine (1916), p. 24, quoting Mouve- 
ment Socialiste, 1902, pp. 17-46. Also Adolphe Smith, The Pan-German 
Internationale, p. 5. 

3 Laskine, op. cit. pp. 26, 27, quoting Der Briefwechsel zwischen Kar 
Marx und Friedrich Engels (Dietz, Stuttgart), iii. 406. 



186 - WORLD REVOLUTION 

Marxian Socialism is that the working-classes must them- 
selves work out their own salvation." * 

It was, moreover, not only the industrial " prole- 
tariat " of France that Marx despised, but also those 
dwellers in the country districts who remained contentedly 
at work on their own bit of land — an arrangement, of 
course, directly opposed to the principles of Communism. 

" The Bonapartes," he had written contemptuously 
after 1852, " are the dynasty of the peasants, that is to say, 
of the mass of the French nation." This dynasty, he goes 
on to point out, is therefore represented not by the revo- 
lutionary peasant " who wishes to overthrow the old 
order," but by " the conservative peasant," who, "stupidly 
bound by the old order, wishes to see himself saved and 
protected with his portion of the soil under the shadow of 
the Empire." 2 

If then it was the prosperity of the French peasant that 
roused Marx's ire, we might at least expect him to extend 
some sympathy towards the poor and destitute amongst 
the working-classes. Not at all. This portion of the people 
is designated by him as the " Lumpenproletariat," that 
is to say, the " ragged proletariat," for which, as Bakunin 
pointed out with indignation, " Marx, Engels, and all the 
school of Social Democrats of Germany display a pro- 
found contempt." 3 What section of the " proletariat " 
then did Marx approve? Obviously the section that 
showed itself submissive to his dictates. 

The respective attitudes of Marx and of Bakunin 
towards the people much resembled those of Robespierre 
and Marat, their predecessors in the rival schools of State 
Socialism and Anarchy. To Robespierre the people whose 
"sovereignty " he proclaimed consisted simply of his own 
following amongst the men, and more particularly the 
women, of the Paris Faubourgs; to Marx, the proletariat, 
whose dictatorship he advocated, was represented by the 
small number of working-men who showed themselves 
willing to play into the hands of their German and Jewish 

1 Violence and the Labour Movement, by Robert Hunter, p. 148. 
8 Marx, La Lutte des classes, p. 345. 
• Bakunin, L'Etat et Vanarchie, i. 8. 



THE INTERNATIONALE * 187 

exploiters. But both to Marat and to Bakunin the people 
meant merely the turbulent elements amongst the popu- 
lace — wastrels, criminals, drunkards, thieves, and vaga- 
bonds. Bakunin proposing his favourite toast, " To the 
destruction of all law and order and the unchaining of 
evil passions! " 1 might well have been the soul of the 
Spanish dwarf reincarnated in the body of the Russian 
giant. For criminals he expressed his predilection quite 
frankly : 

" Only the proletariat in rags is inspired by the spirit 
and force of the coming social revolution, and in no way 
the bourgeois stratum of the working masses." His hopes 
even in the moujiks of Russia were disappointed, owing to 
the patriarchal conditions of their lives and their respect 
for the Emperor, so that it is to the brigands that he looks 
for salvation. 

The only man who in the midst of the Russian people has 
the audacity to revolt against the Commune is the brigand. 
Thence brigandage constitutes an important phenomenon in 
the history of the Russian people — the first revolutionaries of 
Russia, Pougatcheff and Stenka Razine, were brigands. 2 

" Robbery," Bakunin writes again, " is one of the most 
honourable forms of Russian national life. The brigand is the 
hero, the defender, the po-oular avenger, the irreconcilable 
enemy of the State, and of all social and civil order established 
by the State. He is the wrestler in life and in death against all 
this civilization of officials, of nobles, of priests, and of the 
crown." 3 

In all this Bakunin showed himself a true and faithful 
follower of Weishaupt — was the robber baron of Dago 
perhaps an Illuminatus too ? — and it is here that we find 
the explanation of his creed. Until the dawn of Illuminism 
crime and virtue, good and evil, held their opposing 
positions in the conceptions of the human mind. Even in 
pagan Greece Kerkuon and Procrustes found no apologists, 
but ranked simply as monsters of whom it was necessary 
to rid the world. It was left to Weishaupt to confuse the 

1 Guillaume, Documents de l' Internationale, i. 130. 

* Correspondence de Bakounine, p. 38. 

* Words addressed to Students, by Bakunin and Netchaieff (1869). 



188 WORLD REVOLUTION 

issues, to glorify by the name of " useful larceny " 1 what 
had hitherto been described by the ugly name of theft, and 
to Brissot, the adept of illuminized Freemasonry, to 
declare theft to be a virtue. And it was Weishaupt who 
had first set out to destroy that religion and civilization 
which Bakunin and the Baron von Sternberg alike 
detested. 

Bakunin then must not be regarded as a solitary 
demoniac, but as an exponent of those doctrines of Illum- 
inism which found a fruitful soil in his wild Russian nature. 
On this point we have definite evidence, for the Socialist 
Malon, who was a member of the Internationale and 
personally acquainted with the Russian Anarchist, has 
explicitly stated that " Bakunin was a disciple of Weis- 
haupt." 2 It is only necessary to study the writings of 
Bakunin in order to recognize the truth of this statement. 

Moreover, in the same year of 1864 that the Inter- 
nationale was founded, Bakunin and his disciple Netchaieff 
started a society on precisely the lines of the Illuminati. 
The plan of such conspirators has always been to envelop 
one secret society in another on the system of a nest of 
Chinese boxes, the outer one large and visible, the inner 
ones dwindling down to the tiny, almost invisible cell that 
contains the secret. This was the plan of Weishaupt, 
effected by his grades of adepts, initiated by successive 
stages into the greater and the lesser mysteries; and this 
too was the plan of Bakunin and his confederate Netchaieff. 
The society organized by them consisted of three orders : 
(1) the International Brothers, (2) the National Brothers, 
and (3) the International Alliance of Social Democracy, 
which in its turn covered the inner secret society called the 
" Fraternal Alliance," over which Bakunin exercised 
supreme control. 

We have only to compare the programme of the Inter- 
national Social Democratic Alliance with the plan of Weis- 
haupt to recognize the evident connection between the 
two. Placed in parallel columns the aims of both will be 
seen to be identical : 

1 Barruel, Memoires sur le Jacobinisme, iv. 18. 

* Article on the Internationale, by Malon, in the Nouvelle Revue, 
xxvi. 752. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 



189 



Weishaupt 
The order of the Illuminati 
abjured Christianity. ... In the 
lodges death was declared an 
eternal sleep; patriotism and 
loyalty were called narrow- 
minded prejudices incompatible 
with universal benevolence; 
further, they accounted all princes 
usurpers and tyrants, and all 
privileged orders as their abet- 
tors. They meant to abolish the 
laws which protected property 
accumulated by long-continued 
and successful industry; and to 
prevent for the future any such 
accumulation. They intended to 
establish universal liberty and 
equality, the imprescriptible 
rights of man, and as prepara- 
tion for all this they intended to 
root out all religion and ordinary 
morality, and even to break the 
bonds of domestic life by destroy- 
ing the veneration for marriage 
vows, and by taking the educa- 
tion of children out of the hands 
of the parents. 



Bakunin 

The Alliance professes Athe- 
ism. It aims at the abolition 
of religious services, the replace- 
ment of belief by knowledge 
and divine by human justice, 
the abolition of marriage as 
a political, religious, and civic 
arrangement. Before all, it aims 
at the definite . and complete 
abolition of all classes and the 
political, economic, and social 
equality of the individual of 
either sex. The abolition of in- 
heritance. All children to be 
brought up on a uniform system, 
so that artificial inequalities may 
disappear. . . . 

It aims directly at the triumph 
of the cause of labour over capi- 
tal. It repudiates so-called patri- 
otism and the rivalry of nations 
and desires the universal associa- 
tion of all local associations by 
means of freedom. 

The final aim of this society 
was " to accelerate the universal 
revolution." 



Now how is it possible to suppose that the extraordi- 
nary similarity between these two programmes can be due 
to mere coincidence ? In the Alliance of Bakunin, as in the 
Communist Manifesto of Marx, we find again all the points 
of Weishaupt — abolition of property, inheritance, mar- 
riage, and all morality, of patriotism and all religion. Is it 
not obvious that the plan had been handed down to the 
succeeding groups of Socialists and Anarchists by the 
secret societies which had carried on the traditions of the 
Illuminati, and that Bakunin, and still more his coadjutor 
Netchaieff, was simply an Illuminatus? 

Netchaieff , moreover, is a type of no small importance 
to the history of social revolution. Uninspired by such 
anarchic philosophy as that proclaimed by Weishaupt and 
Bakunin, Netchaieff showed himself a pure destructionist 



190 WORLD REVOLUTION 

whose ferocity was untempered by the genial moods of 
Bakunin. "He was a liar, a thief, and a murderer — the 
incarnation of Hatred, Malice, and Revenge, who stopped 
at no crime against friend or foe that promised to advance 
what he was pleased to call the Revolution." } In the 
Revolutionary Catechism he composed in conjunction with 
Bakunin the following passages occur: 

The revolutionary must let nothing stand between him and 
the work of destruction. . . . For him exists only one single 
pleasure, one single consolation, one reward, one satisfaction — 
the success of the revolution. Night and day he must have but 
one thought, but one aim — implacable destruction. ... If he 
continues to live in this world it is only in order to annihilate it 
all the more surely. 

For this reason no reforms were to be advocated; on 
the contrary, " every effort is to be made to heighten and 
increase the evil and sorrows which will at length wear out 
the patience of the people and encourage an insurrection 
en masse." 2 The second category of the association was 
therefore to be composed of " people to whom we concede 
life provisionally in order that by a series of monstrous 
acts they may drive the people into inevitable revolt." 3 
In other words, oppressors of the people were to be 
encouraged. 

To the sane mind it is almost impossible to believe 
that any man could put forward such theories, but this is 
precisely the advantage obtained by the advocates of 
World Revolution — their doctrines are so monstrous that 
they appear unbelievable to the world in general. Yet 
here is no possibility of misrepresentation, for the Revolu- 
tionary Catechism may be seen in print by any one who 
cares to look at it. 

But like many another conspirator, from Weishaupt 
onwards, Bakunin found himself outwitted by his coad- 
jutor. Perfectly unscrupulous as to the means he employed 
he had at first welcomed Netchaiefl as " a force," but by 
degrees he came to realize the danger he himself incurred 

1 Hunter, Violence and the Labour Movement, p. 16. 

2 Alliance de la Democratic Socialiste, etc., publiee par ordre du Congres 
International de la Haye (1873), p. 90. 3 Ibid. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 191 

by allying himself with a man who failed to recognize even 
the principle of " honour among thieves." Towards 1870 
Bakunin discovered that Netchaieff, whilst pretending to 
be his most devoted disciple, had all the while been a 
member of another society still more secret than the 
Alliance Sociale Democratique, and of which he had never 
divulged the inner mysteries to his master. 

• " Netchaieff, " Bakunin wrote to Talandier, "is a devoted 
fanatic, but at the same time a very dangerous fanatic, and one 
with whom an alliance could only be disastrous to every one. 
This is why: He was first a member of an occult committee 
which really had existed in Russia. This committee no longer 
exists; all its members have been arrested. Netchaieff alone 
remains, and alone he constitutes what he calls the committee. 
The Russian organization having been destroyed, he is trying to 
create a new one abroad. All this would be perfectly natural, 
legitimate, and very useful, but the way he goes to work is 
detestable. Keenly impressed by the catastrophe which has 
just destroyed the secret organization in Russia, he has gradually 
arrived at the conclusion that in order to found a serious and 
indestructible society one must take for a basis the policy of 
Machiavelli, and adopt in full the system of the Jesuits — 
bodily violence and a lying soul. 

" Truth, mutual confidence, serious and severe solidarity 
exist only between about ten individuals who form the sanctum 
sanctorum of the society. All the rest must serve as a blind 
instrument and as matter to be exploited by the hands of these 
ten men really solidarized. It is permitted, and even ordered, 
that one should deceive them, compromise them, steal from 
them, and even if needs be ruin them — they are conspiracy- 
fodder (chair a conspiration). ..." 

Then Bakunin goes on to describe Netchaieff s methods : 

In the name of the cause he must get hold of your whole 
person without your knowing it. In order to do this he will 
spy on you and try to get hold of your secrets, and for that 
purpose, in your absence, left alone in your room he will open 
all your drawers, read all your correspondence, and when a 
letter seems interesting to him, that is to say, compromising 
from any point of view for you or for one of your friends, he will 
seal it and keep it carefully as a document against you or 
against your friend. . . . When convicted of this in a general 
assembly he dared to say to us: " Well, yes, it is our system. 
We consider as enemies, whom it is our duty to deceive and 
compromise, all those who are not completely with us. . . ." 
If you have introduced him to a friend, his first thought will be 



192 WORLD REVOLUTION 

to raise discord, gossip and intrigue between you — in a word, 
to make you quarrel. Your friend has a wife, a daughter, he will 
try to seduce her, to give her a child, in order to drag her away 
from official morality and throw her into an attitude of forced 
revolutionary protest against society. All personal ties, all 
friendship are considered by them as an evil which it is their 
duty to destroy, because all this constitutes a force which, being 
outside the secret organization, diminishes the unique force of 
the latter. Do not cry out that I am exaggerating; all this has 
been amply developed and proved by me. 1 

It will be seen that all these were the exact principles 
and methods laid down by Weishaupt for the Illuminati. 

Now it is curious to find the description of the inner 
ring of secret intrigue described by Bakunin in the above- 
quoted letter exactly corroborated by a very different 
authority, namely, the book of Gougenot des Mousseaux, 
entitled Le Juif, le Judaisme et la Judaization des peuples 
Chretiens, published just a year earlier, in 1869. 

It was in December 1865, that is to say, a year after 
Bakunin had formed his Alliance in conjunction with 
Netchaieff , that Des Mousseaux received a letter from a 
Protestant statesman in the service of a great Germanic 
power, saying: 

Since the revolutionary recrudescence of 1845, I have had 
relations with a Jew who, from vanity, betrayed the secret of 
the secret societies with which he had been associated, and who 
warned me eight or ten days beforehand of all the revolutions 
which were about to break out at any point of Europe. I owe 
to him the unshakable conviction that all these movements of 
" oppressed people," etc., etc., are devised by half-a-dozen 
individuals, who give their orders to the secret societies of all 
Europe. The ground is absolutely mined beneath our feet, 
and the Jews provide a large contingent of these miners. . . . 
The Jewish bankers will soon be, through their prodigious 
fortunes, our lords and masters. . . . All the great Radical news- 
papers of Germany are in the hands of Jews. 2 

It is impossible to suppose any collusion between men 
of opinions so t divergent as the Royalist Catholic Des 
Mousseaux, his friend the Protestant statesman, and the 
Russian Anarchists Bakunin and Netchaieff. We must, 
therefore, admit that each must have reached his conclu- 

1 Correspondance de Bakounine, published by Michel Dragomanov, 
«r>. 325-327. 2 Gougenot des Mousseaux, op. cit. pp. 367, 368. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 193 

sions independently of the other, and the extraordinary 
similarity between their two accounts tends most cer- 
tainly to confirm the assertion that this mysterious asso- 
ciation really existed. 1 Of whom was it composed? 
According to Des Mousseaux it was largely controlled by 
Jews who had insinuated themselves into the Masonic 
Lodges and secret societies, and curiously enough it was 
in October of this same year, 1869, that Bakunin, who had 
been attacked by certain Jews in the Internationale, wrote 
his Study on the German Jews, where he repeats precisely 
the same story of Jewish intrigue. The passage in question 
runs as follows: 

I begin by begging you to believe that I am in no way the 
enemy nor the detractor of the Jews. Although I may be con- 
sidered a cannibal, I do not carry savagery to that point, and I 
assure you that in my eyes all nations have their worth. Each 
is, moreover, an ethnographically historic product, and is con- 
sequently responsible neither for its faults nor its merits. It is 
thus that we may observe in connection with the modern Jews 
that their nature lends itself little to frank Socialism. Their 
history, long before the Christian era, implanted in them an 
essentially mercantile and bourgeois tendency, with the result 
that, considered as a nation, they are par excellence the exploiters 
of other men's work, and they have a natural horror and fear 
of the popular masses, whom they despise, moreover, whether 
openly or in secret. The habit of exploitation, whilst develop- 
ing the intelligence of the exploiters, gives it an exclusive and 
disastrous bent and quite contrary to the interests as well as to 
the instincts of the proletariat. I know that in expressing with 
this frankness my intimate opinion on the Jews I expose myself 
to enormous dangers. Many people share it, but very few dare 
publicly to express it, for the Jewish sect, very much more 
formidable than that of the Jesuits, Catholic or Protestant, 
constitutes today a veritable power in Europe. It reigns 
despotically in commerce, in the banks, and it has invaded three- 
quarters of German journalism and a very considerable portion 
of the journalism of other countries. Woe, then, to him who has 
the clumsiness to displease it! 2 

But Bakunin had underestimated the control of the 
Jews over the press. The great anarchist might tilt with 
impunity against principalities and powers, might incite 
to murder, pillage, and rebellion, but the moment he 

1 See chart, society marked with note of interrogation. 
1 (Euvres de Bakounine, v. 241. 



194 WORLD REVOLUTION 

attempted to attack the Jews he was unable to obtain a 
hearing, and his polemique never saw the light until his 
works were published thirty or forty years later. The 
same failure had attended the efforts of the Hebertiste 
Tridon, who at about the same date wrote a denunciation 
of the Jews which could not be published during his 
lifetime. 1; 

It will be seen tnat for all their destructive energy the 
French and Russian anarchists were no match for the 
German Jews of the Internationale into which Bakunin 
and his Alliance had been admitted in August 1869. 
Indeed Bakunin clearly stood in awe of Marx, for in the 
above-quoted letter he is careful to specify that he includes 
in his strictures only " the crowd of Jewish pygmies " who 
had penetrated into the Socialist movement, and exempts 
" the two Jewish giants Marx and Lassalle," and ten 
months earlier he had written to Marx himself in terms of 
the most servile flattery :> : 

You ask whether I continue to be your friend." Yes, more 
than ever, dear Marx. . . . You see, dearfriend. ^that^I ' am 
your disciple, and I am proud of it. a 

But in a letter to Herzen on October 28, 1869, Bakunin 
explains his attitude to Marx and his reason for conferring 
on him the title of giant. \ 

Marx, who detests me and who, I imagine, loves no one but 
himself ... is nevertheless a man very useful to the Inter- 
nationale. ... If at the present moment I had undertaken a 
war against Marx three quarters of the members of the Inter- 
nationale would have turned against me. and I ! should/have 
been at a disadvantage. . . . 8 

Although from the beginning Marx had hoped to make 
the Working-Men's Association " the instrument of his 
personal views," it was not until 1868 that he succeeded in 
definitely directing its policy along his line of State Social- 
ism. At the first two congresses, of Geneva in 1866 and 
Lausanne in 1867, the theories of the French Proudhoniens 
still prevailed; the Congress at Brussels in 1868 showed, 
however, the parting of the ways by declaring that the 

1 Drumont, La France juive, p. 13. , 

2 Guillaume, Documents, etc., i. 103. 

/ Correspondance de Bakounine, p. 290. 



THE INTERNATIONALE 195 

machines and instruments of work should belong to the 
workers, but all public services — railways, mines, etc. — 
to the community. This programme was therefore a blend 
of the system later to be known as Syndicalism and of the 
Communism of Vidal and Pecqueur which had been 
adopted by Marx. 

At the Fourth Congress in Basle in 1869 the policy of 
the Association veered still further towards Communism 
by the abolition of private property in land and of inherit- 
ance. The programme of Weishaupt had thus been 
accepted almost in its entirety by the Internationale. 1 

Fribourg, who with the other French workers of the 
association opposed the abolition of private property in 
land, points out that the history of the Internationale 
must be divided into two periods, the first up to the Con- 
gress of Lausanne " mutualist," that is to say, demanding 
free control of industry, the second period Russo-German, 
when the association " became Communist, that is to say 
authoritative." 2 From this policy, as also from the prin- 
ciple of class hatred upheld both by Marx and Bakunin, 
Fribourg disassociates himself and his comrades entirely. 
" I insist," he writes, " that it should be known that no 
upright mind could have conceived the idea of giving birth 
to a society of war and hatred." 3 And since this is what it 
had become, Fribourg declares that by 1869 " the Inter- 
nationale of the French founders was dead, quite dead." 4 
" The working-men's International," remarks Duhring, 
" was no longer working-class, in the sense that it 
manoeuvred, used, and exploited the workers of different 
countries." 6 

Such then were the intrigues of the men who called 
themselves the champions of the " proletariat." 

1 M. Louis finault {Paris bride par la Commune, p. 27) and the Vicomte 
de Beaumont Vassy {La Commune de Paris, p. 325) both reproduce the 
programme of the Internationale as published in 1867 in which the five 
points of Weishaupt, viz. : " The abolition of all religion, of property, of the 
family, of heredity, of the nation {i. e. of patriotism) " are exactly repro- 
duced. The document which they quote is stated to have been signed 
by the secretary of the Internationale and to have been published in the 
form of a pamphlet entitled Le Droit des travailleurs. I have been unable 
to discover this pamphlet in the British Museum or elsewhere. 

2 Fribourg, L' 'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, p. 2. 
8 Ibid. 4 Ibid. p. 140. 

6 Eiigen Duhring, Kritische Geschichte der Nationalbkonomie, p. 566. 



196 WORLD REVOLUTION 

All talk of conditions of labour, all discussion of the 
practical problems of industry had been abandoned and 
the Internationale became simply an engine of warfare 
against civilization. By its absorption of the secret 
societies and of the doctrines of Illuminism all the machin- 
ery of revolution passed into its keeping. Every move in 
the game devised by Weishaupt, every method for engi- 
neering disturbances and for spreading inflammatory 
propaganda, became part of its programme. 

So just as the Jacobin Club had openly executed the 
hidden plan of the Illuminati, the Internationale, holding 
within it the same terrible secrets, carried on the work 
of World Revolution in the full light of day. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 

The Franco-Prussian War — Internationalism — Karl Marx, pan-Ger- 
manist — The Commune — Conflict between Marx and Bakunin — 
End of the Internationale. , ,■:>>.' ► f"i 

We have seen in the last chapter that as a means for the 
reorganization of industry the Internationale had failed 
signally of its purpose. What then of its Internationalism? 
How far was the brotherhood of man which had consti- 
tuted one of its fundamental doctrines to avail as a barrier 
against militarism? 

The conviction that war is a relic of barbarism and 
should be done away with, has been held by humanitarians 
at every stage in the history of civilization; the question 
is how so obviously desirable an end can be accomplished. 
In France, as we have!: seen, groups of enthusiasts as far 
back as the Confreres of the twelfth century had declared 
it possible, and the Constituent Assembly of the First 
Revolution had devoted their energies to the formation of 
a " League of Perpetual Peace." " Let all men be free as we 
are/' a deputy had cried, " and we shall have no more 
wars! " Forthwith the decree was passed that the French 
nation should never again undertake any war of conquest. 

Mirabeau alone had shown the futility of such resolu- 
tions in his immortal reply : " I ask myself," he said to the 
Assembly, lulled in its dreams of pacifism, " I ask myself 
whether because we suddenly change our political system 
we shall force other nations to change theirs. . . . Until 
then perpetual peace will remain a dream and a dangerous 
dream if it leads France to disarm before a Europe in arms." 1 
1 Albert Sorel, V Europe et la Revolution Francaise, ii. 87. 
197 



198 i WORLD REVOLUTION 

Mirabeau's prophetic instinct was justified when eighty 
years later the same dangerous dream led the French 
workers of the Internationale to weaken before a Prussia 
in arms. 

The idea of " a strike of the peoples against war " was 
proposed as early as 1868 at the Congress of the Inter- 
nationale in Brussels, and Dupont, the mouthpiece of 
Marx, closed his presidential address with the words: 

The clerics say: "See this Congress, it declares that it wishes 
neither for government, armies, nor religion." They say the 
truth, we wish for no more governments because governments 
crush us with taxes ; we wish for no more armies because armies 
massacre us; we wish for no more religion because religion 
stifles intelligence. 1 

When, therefore, two years later the first rumblings of 
the Franco-Prussian War were heard, the French workers 
fondly imagined that the Internationale would intervene 
and stop the conflict. Accordingly with touching naivete 
they published in their paper Le Reveil on the 12th of July 
1870 an address to the people of Germany begging them to 
desist from strife: 

Brothers of Germany, in the name of peace do not listen to 
the subsidized or servile voices which seek to deceive you on the 
true spirit of France. Remain deaf to senseless provocations, 
for war between us would be a fratricidal war. Remain calm, 
as a great and courageous people can do without compromising 
its dignity. Our divisions would only bring about on both sides 
of the Rhine the complete triumph of despotism. 2 

When, however, a week later, on July 19, Napoleon III. 
was tricked by Bismarck into declaring war on Prussia, the 
German Social Democrats rallied in a body to the standard 
of Imperialism, and the so-called " Central Committee of 
the German International Sections " sitting at Brunswick 
issued a proclamation on the 24th of July referring to " the 
legitimate aspirations of the German people for national 
unity," and ending with the words: " Long live Germany! 
Long live the International struggle of the proletariat." 3 

Deluded by the last hypocritical protestation, Solidar- 
ity the organ of the Internationale, still expressed its 
hopes for the future. 

1 x Guillaume, Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste, p. 51. 
a Ibid. p. 84. 3 Guillaume, Documents, ii. 70. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 . 199 

Two great military powers are about to devour each other. 
Since we have obtained this immense result, that the two peoples 
whom their masters have declared to be in a state of war, instead 
of hating each other, hold out the hand of friendship, we can 
await the denouement with confidence. 1 

But it was not until the tide of war had turned defi- 
nitely in favour of Prussia that the Committee of Bruns- 
wick saw fit to respond with a plea for peace. It is true 
that isolated working-men in Germany expressed their 
sympathy with the French people, and that the Socialists 
Bebel and Liebknecht were later on thrown into prison for 
protesting against the war after it had broken out, never- 
theless Liebkneckt himself, before it was too late, had 
urged Prussia on to aggression. Thus in the Volksstaat for 
July 13, 1870, he " had reproached Bismarck and the 
King of Prussia for showing themselves too conciliatory 
towards France and of damaging the prestige of Germany 
by a too humble attitude." 2 

The fact then remains that as a preventive to war the 
Internationale proved completely futile for the very 
reason given by Mirabeau eighty years earlier. The 
French Internationalists had reckoned without the 
German national spirit, and Guillaume, writing in Soli- 
darity on March 28, 1871, is obliged to confess: 

What an infinitesimal minority is formed by these men with 
convictions (Bebel and Liebkneckt)! How many are there in 
Germany, alas! of whom we can call ourselves the brothers? 
The immense majority of the German working-men, are they not 
intoxicated like the bourgeoisie by Bismarck's victories? And 
are we not obliged today, whilst making an honourable excep- 
tion of the friends we have just mentioned, to consider the 
German people in the mass as an obstacle to the Revolution? 3 

It was not till two years later that the Latin members 
of the Internationale discovered to their pained surprise 
that the " Central Committee of the German International 
Sections " was not, as they had imagined, the German 
branch of the Internationale but merely an unofficial 
group with no organization, for the German Government 
had taken the precaution to forbid the formation of an 

1 Guillaume, Documents, etc., ii. 69. 

1 Laskine, V Internationale et le pan-Germanistne, p. 202. 

• Guillaume, Documents, etc., ii. 137. 



200 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Internationale amongst its own people. 1 Thus, although 
Germans controlled the policy of the Internationale 
abroad, the Internationale was not allowed to exist in 
Germany! As Mr. Adolphe Smith has well expressed it 
in relation to the 1917 situation* 

That Socialism, as " made in Germany," and destined mainly 
for foreign exportation, would facilitate the invasion not only of 
Russia, but also of France, Italy, and even England, was not 
very apparent at first. Yet this might have been suspected, 
for it was evident that the Socialist Internationale, whenever it 
was controlled by Germans, became a pan-German association. 2 

The real meaning of Internationalism became in time 
apparent to the French workers. The hand of Bismarck 
had been strongly suspected in the great strike at Creuzot.* 

".Strikes, always strikes, and still more strikes," Fribourg 
wrote in 1871, " no more study nor anything that resembles 
it. . . . Foreign Internationals who hold the ground, support 
the movement, found violent newspapers, an epidemic of dis- 
turbances rages in France and paralyses production." 4 

What was the r61e of Marx in this question of Inter- 
nationalism? In order to realize his full perfidy we must 
refer again to the Preamble to the Statutes of the Inter- 
nationale drawn up by him. The first principle, that " the 
emancipation of the workers must be brought about by the 
workers themselves," he had violated, as we have seen,Jby 
insisting on the admission of non-workers to the Associa- 
tion; the further principle of " a fraternal union between 
the workers of different countries " was now at stake, and 
Marx repudiated this likewise. 

The truth is that Marx had never believed in universal 
brotherhood any more than he had believed in the dictator- 
ship of the proletariat — these were slogans to be made 
use of but not carried into practice. Thus just before 
Sadowa he had written to Engels'i 

The Proudhonien clique amongst the Paris students preaches 
peace, declares war an anachronism, nationalities vain words, 
attacks Bismarck. ... As disciples of Proudhon — my good 

1 Guillaume, Documents, etc., ii. 137., 

3 The Pan-German Internationale, p. 3.. _ ^_.., .^ - .. ^ v .,, 
i 3 La Commune de Paris, by the Comte de Beaumont Vassy, p. 13. 

4 Fribourg, V Association Internationale des Travailleurs (1871). 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 201 

friends Lafargue and Longuet are amongst them — they wish 
to abolish misery and ignorance, ignorance with which they 
themselves are afflicted all the more that they make a parade of 
a so-called " social science," they are quite simply grotesque. 1 

The appeal of the French working-men to their 
brothers of Germany in 1870 was now declared by Marx 
to be " pure Jingoism." 

" The French," he wrote to Engels on July 20, " need a 
thrashing (die Franzosen brauchen Prugel). If the Prussians 
are victorious, the centralization of the power of the State will 
be useful to the centralization of the German working-class. 
Besides, German preponderance will transport the centre of 
gravity of the working-class movement from France to Germany, 
and it is sufficient to compare the movement in the two coun- 
tries from 1866 until the present moment in order to see that the 
German working-class is superior to the French as much from 
the point of view of theory as of organization. 

The preponderance in the theatre of the world of the German 
proletariat over the French proletariat would be at the same 
time the preponderance of our theory over Proudhon's. 2 

Now it is curious to notice that Nietzsche, who as the 
prophet of autocracy, Imperialism, and warfare has usually 
been regarded as the opposite pole to Marx, had expressed 
himself at the above-quoted date, namely in 1866, at the 
time of Prussia's victory over Austria at Sadowa, in the 
following words: 

We hold the cards; but as long as Paris remains the centre 
of Europe things will remain in the old condition. It is inevi- 
table that we should make an effort to upset this equuibrium, 
or at least try to upset it. If we fail, then let us hope to fall, 
each of us, on a field of battle, struck by some French shell. 3 

How are we to explain the extraordinary resemblance 
between the point of view expressed in these two passages ? 
Can we attribute it to mere coincidence, or shall we find a 
common inspiration at work behind both writers? It is 
impossible to study the lives and writings of Marx and 
Nietzsche without recognizing a certain resemblance 
between the two men; both were continually at war with 
the rest of the human race, both had been embittered by 

1 Laskine, L' Internationale et le pan-Germanisme, p. 23; letter of 
June 7, 1866. 

2 Der Briefwechsel zwischen Marx und Engels, iv. 296. 

3 Life of Nietzsche, by Daniel Halevy (Eng. trans.), p. 53. 



202 WORLD REVOLUTION . 

early experiences, and both were animated by a fierce and 
undying hatred towards Christianity arising from the 
same cause, namely that both worshipped force. If Marx 
incarnated the destructive spirit we associate with Bol- 
shevism, Nietzsche was in reality an inverted Bolshevik, a 
man who had narrowly escaped being a violent revolu- 
tionary Socialist. Whilst Nietzsche desired to maintain 
the uneducated classes in a state of slavery, Marx aimed at 
the enslavement of the intelligentzia', whilst Nietzsche 
advocated the autocracy of Superman, Marx professed to 
believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat ; whilst Marx 
devoted his energies to stirring up class hatred from below, 
Nietzsche by his " class consciousness of a higher class " 1 
strove to promote it from above. In a word, both were in 
revolt against the existing social order tempered by 
Christian forbearance and compassion, which they 
regarded as debilitating to man's highest faculties. 

This meeting of extremes explains the fact that 
Nietzsche found an affinity in Mazzini whilst Marx entered 
wholeheartedly into the aims of Bismarck. It is impossible 
not to suspect a common inspiration behind them both, 
working for the advancement of pan-German interests. 

At any rate in 1870 Marx faithfully served the cause of 
German Imperialism. Indeed the French branch of the 
Internationale in London actually denounced him as an 
agent of Bismarck, and Marx wrote to Engels on August 3, 
1870, saying that he was not only accused of being a Prus- 
sian agent but of having received £10,000 from Bismarck. 
Fortunately, adds the author of The Pan-German Inter- 
nationale, who quotes these admissions, " all this private 
correspondence has been recently printed by the Socialist 
publisher, Dietz of Stuttgart. We are thus able to obtain, 
not from what others have said but from what the prin- 
cipals themselves wrote, a clear indication of their motives 
and acts." 2 

In the light of these revelations it is difficult to see in 

* Friedrich Nietzsche, by Georges Brandes (Eng. trans.), p. 30. 

1 Adolphe Smith, The Pan-German Internationale, p. 5; see also Laskine, 
V Internationale et le pan-Germanisme, p. 83. Note that both these 
writers are themselves Socialists. Edmond Laskine is said to be a Russian 
jew; he was educated in France. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 203 

Marx's revolutionary violence the Jewish spirit of revenge 
for the persecution of his race to which it has frequently 
been attributed. If Marx resented persecution, why did 
he throw in his lot with the country in which Judenhetze 
was most rampant? It is possible that Bismarck knew 
how to exploit his racial hatred against Christian civiliza- 
tion, but the fact remains that, as two modern writers have 
expressed it, Marx was, or at any rate became, " a German 
of the Germans, and Marx has done more for the Father- 
land " — which incidentally had exiled him! — " than all 
the hordes of German agents that have filtered across the 
world." " 

In this attitude he was naturally supported by Engels 
— "Marx's evil genius," as Mrs. Marx was wont to 
describe him — a constitutional militarist. Thus when the 
Internationale of Paris again protested to the German 
people against the invasion of French territory, and 
this time the German Social Democrats at Brunswick 
responded with the proposal of "an honourable peace 
with the French Republic," Engels wrote indignantly to 
Marx: 

It is just the old infatuation, the superiority of France, the 
inviolability of the soil sanctified by 1793, and from which all 
the French swinishnesses (les cochonneries francaises) com- 
mitted since then have not been able to take away the character, 
the sanctity of the word Republic. ... I hope that these 
people will return to good sense once their first intoxication 
has passed, otherwise it will become devilishly difficult to con- 
tinue international relations with them. 2 

By Marx and Engels the French working-men were 
therefore abjured to dissociate themselves from the war 
and to forget the memories of 1792. Meanwhile the 
German workers must be kept quiet. 

" Longuet (the French Socialist)," Engels wrote again, " is 
very amusing! Because William I. has granted them a Republic 
now they want to make a revolution in Germany! ... If we 
have any influence in Paris we must prevent the working-men 
from moving until peace is made. . . ." 3 

* Bolshevik Russia, by G. E. Raine and E. Luboff, p. 17. 

* Guillaume, Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste, p. 95. 3 Ibid. p. 99. 



204 WORLD REVOLUTION 

And next day he adds: 

The war by being prolonged is taking a disagreeable turn. 
The French have not yet been thrashed enough, and yet on the 
other hand the Germans have already triumphed a good deal. 

It is true that, in the end, Marx in a letter to the Daily 
News on January 16, 1871, professed some sympathy with 
the martyred nation, and even expressed the opinion that 
the complete supremacy of Prussia not only over the 
people of France but of the rest of Germany would be fatal 
to the cause of liberty, but as by this time the triumph of 
Prussia was a fait accompli — for two days later the King 
of Prussia was crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles 
— such protestations could be made with impunity. The 
fact remains that, as M. Guillaume expresses it: 

In 1870 Marx and Engels, German patriots before everything 
applauded the victories of the German armies. . . . And they 
took advantage of their position to try, in the name of the 
General Council of the Internationale, to dissuade the French 
proletariat from fighting against the invaders. . . . Their 
attitude at this moment was a real treachery towards the Inter- 
nationale for the profit of pan-German interests. These are 
things that it is necessary to make known to all Republicans, 
Socialists or otherwise, in France and elsewhere. 1 

It will be seen, then, that Internationalism as devised 
by Weishaupt, interpreted by Clootz, and carried out by 
Marx and Engels, and in our own day by the agent of 
Germany, Nicholas Lenin, has served two causes only — 
German Imperialism and Jewish intrigue. 

After the defeat of the French armies at Sedan on 
September 1, 1870, the Empire was swept away and social 
revolution dealt the final blows to crushed and suffering 
France. 

The first outbreak of revolution occurred in the prov- 
inces, and at Lyons was carried out by the Bakunists. 
Like the war-horse smelling the battle afar, Bakunin him- 
self at Locarno heard the revolutionary Socialists of Lyons 
calling, and borrowing some money, according to his usual 
custom, hastened to the scene of action. Here he found 
himself once more in his element. The city was in a state 

1 Guillaume, Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste, p. iv. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 205 

of chaos; " none of the leaders of the Internationale had 
any clear idea what they intended to do; " public meetings 
of ^extraordinary violence were taking place, at which " the 
most sanguinary motions were put forward and received 
with enthusiasm; " * in a word, it was a state of affairs 
after Bakunin' s own heart. 

But once again the bourgeoisie rose in defence of law 
and order; and the Comitt de Saint Public, that had 
occupied the Town Hall, was obliged to evacuate. The 
r61e of Bakunin himself was thus derisively described by 
Marx: 

On the 28th of September, the day of his arrival, the people 
had seized the Hotel de Ville. Bakunin installed himself there; 
then the critical moment arrived, the moment awaited for so 
many years, when Bakunin was able to accomplish the most 
revolutionary act the world has ever seen. He decreed the 
abolition of the State. But the State, in the shape and kind of 
two companies of bourgeois National Guards, entered by a door 
that it had been forgotten to guard, cleared the hall, and made 
Bakunin hastily take the road for Geneva. 2 

Bakunin, therefore, bruised and battered — for he had 
been severely handled in the fray — returned to Italy a 
chastened man. Yet wild as appears his scheme of saving 
France from Prussia by " the complete destruction of the 
whole administrative and governmental machine," 3 we 
must admit that he displayed a certain perspicacity with 
regard to the future of French Socialism: 

" I begin to think now," he wrote to Palix, " that it is all 
up with France. . . . She will become a viceroyalty of Germany. 
In the place of her real and living Socialism we shall have the 
doctrinaire Socialism of. the Germans, who will say no more than 
the Prussian bayonets permit them to say." 4 

But the final triumph of German Social Democracy 
was reserved for three years later. 

Whilst these events were taking place in Lyons, the 
Third Republic had been proclaimed after the abdication 
of Napoleon III. On the 17th of September the Siege of 

1 Guillaume, Documents, etc., ii. 92. 

2 Alliance de la Democratic Socialiste, etc., publiee par ordre du Congres 
Internationale de la Haye (1873), p. 21. 

3 Guillaume, Documents, etc., ii. 98. 4 Ibid. 



206 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Paris began. Six weeks later, on the 31st of October, great 
popular indignation was created by the belief that the 
Government had attempted to conceal the news of the 
surrender of Bazaine and the capitulation of Metz. At the 
same time it was announced that the recent victory outside 
Paris had been turned into a defeat and Le Bouget recap- 
tured by the Germans; further, that M. Thiers was 
coming to Paris, under a flag of truce, to negotiate an 
armistice. Then the people who had endured so much 
throughout the siege, feeling that all their sacrifices had 
been in vain, rose against the Government, and the anar- 
chic elements, exploiting the outraged patriotism of the 
Parisians, threw the city into confusion. National unity 
was thus destroyed, and the Prussians, emboldened by 
these dissensions, immediately increased the severity of 
their terms, demanding the ceding of Alsace and Lorraine 
and a heavy war indemnity. 1 Meanwhile their troops were 
carrying terror and desolation throughout the provinces of 
France — burning, pillaging, destroying, and killing with- 
out mercy those who offered the least resistance. 

According to the terms of the armistice declared after 
the coronation of the Emperor William I., the garrison of 
Paris, with the exception of 12,000 men, was ordered to 
be disbanded, but the National Guards, known to be 
infected with revolutionary doctrines, were to be retained. 
It was thus that some of the French soldiers refused to 
march against the Prussians, declaring that they preferred 
to reserve themselves for fighting Frenchmen; that civil 
war was to be preferred to war against a foreign enemy. 2 
But it was observed that these doctrines, the outcome of 
German Social Democracy, exercised no influence over the 
German mind, for whilst the French disciples of Inter- 
nationalism fell back in battle not one Prussian faltered. 3 

The triumphal entry of the Prussians into Paris on 
March 1 was the signal for the revolution to break out; 
and on the 18th of March the National Guards, acting on 
this occasion in a spirit of outraged patriotism at the 
incompetence of the Government in the matter of national 

1 Bonnechose, p. 707. 2 Louis Enault, Paris brute, p. 16. 

• Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 250. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 207 

defence, took possession of the guns ranged in the Place 
des Vosges lest they should fall into the hands of the 
Prussians, and carried them up to the heights of Mont- 
martre. 

At the same time a central committee of National 
Guards, formed on the plan of the Committee of Insurrec- 
tion that had organized the plan of attack on August 10, 
1792, seized the reins of power. In vain the Government 
ordered fresh troops to recapture the guns. The soldiers 
went over to the side of revolution, and barbarously 
murdered their generals Lecomte and Thomas. Once more 
the tricouleur, defeated, gave way to the red flag of the 
social revolution. 

Four days later the affray known as the " Massacre of 
the Place Vend6me " took place, when a procession of " the 
Friends of Order " — an immense demonstration com- 
posed of unarmed National Guards, civilians, women, and 
children, bearing the tricouleur as a rallying sign against 
disorder — were fired on by the insurgents and — accord- 
ing to certain contemporaries — thirty of their number 
killed. 1 

From this moment the revolutionaries were masters of 
Paris. The H6tel de Ville was seized, the Government 
driven out of Versailles and the Commune established in 
its place. 

It is impossible to follow the events of 1871 with the 
same precision as those of 1848 owing to the chaotic nature 
of the movement. Whilst 1848, in spite of the diversity of 
views that prevailed amongst the leaders, remained essen- 
tially a Socialist revolution, 1871 developed more along the 
lines of Anarchy. It is true that at the outset some attempt 
was made by Marx and Engels to control the movement. 

" When the Commune insurrection began in Paris," writes 
Prince Kropotkine, " the General Council insisted upon direct- 
ing the insurrection from London. It required daily reports 
about the events, gave orders, favoured this and hampered that, 
and thus put in evidence the disadvantage of having a govern- 
ing body, even within the association." 2 

1 Bonnechose, Histoire de France, ii. 722; Louis finault, Paris brUle 
par la Commune, p. 33 ; John Leighton, Paris under the Commune, p. 54. 

2 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, ii. 66. 



208 WORLD REVOLUTION 

But these orders of Marx seem to have been disre- 
garded, and it was German Illuminism rather than German 
Social Democracy that gained the ascendancy. When on 
the 26th of April a deputation of Freemasons arrived to 
congratulate the Commune, the old war-cry of Illuminism, 
" The Universal Republic," inaugurated by Anarcharsis 
Clootz, greeted their appearance. 1 

Brother Thirifocque, the orator of the procession, 
declared that " the Commune was the greatest revolution 
it had been given to the world to contemplate; that it was 
the new Temple of Solomon which Freemasons were bound 
in duty to defend." To which Lefrancais, member of the 
Commune, replied that he himself had been received into 
the Loge Ecossaise, and had long been convinced that the 
aim of the association was the same as that of the Com- 
mune — social regeneration. 2 

In accordance with the principles of " universal 
masonry " national interests were soon lost to sight and 
French patriotism became dominated by the spirit of the 
World Revolution. Here again 1871 differed essentially 
from 1848, for whilst that earlier movement, led entirely by 
Frenchmen, retained its national character throughout, 
the Commune quickly became an assemblage of cosmo- 
politan elements entirely unrepresentative of the spirit of 
France. 

Amongst the foreigners in the service of the Commune 
there were 19 Poles, 10 Italians, 7 Germans, 2 Americans, 
2 Russians, 2 Wallachians, 2 Portuguese, 1 Egyptian, 1 
Belgian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Spaniard, and 1 Dutchman. 3 
Generically its elements were divided into Internationals, 
Jacobins, and professional agitators. Amongst this hetero- 
geneous crowd — "the declasses of the whole world," 
writes a contemporary 4 — there could be no unity of 
action or of purpose. 

Nevertheless the French Communards numbered sev- 

1 Leighton, Paris under the Commune, p. 221: "An enthusiastic cry 
of Vive la Franc- Maconnerie! Vive la Republique Universelle! is re-echoed 
from mouth to mouth." 

2 Deschamps, ii. 421, 422. 

3 Leighton, op. cit. (quoting the Figaro) p. 75; finault, Paris brule, 
p. 315. 

4 Paris brule, p. 42. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 209 

eral sincere patriots. It is impossible indeed to conceive 
of any movement taking place in Paris without the roman- 
tic and passionately patriotic spirit of the French making 
itself felt, and the incompetence of the Government had 
driven many enthusiasts over to the side of the revolution. 
Unhappily this enthusiasm had led to fanaticism. Thus 
Flourens, killed by a mounted patrol whilst leading a troop 
of insurgents to Versailles, has been described by an 
English contemporary as "an enthusiast in search of a 
social Eldorado, who would put himself at the service of 
the most forlorn cause." " In the bitter cold winters he 
fed and clothed the poor of Belleville, going from attic to 
attic with money and consolation." But the turbulence of 
his nature had thrown him into agitation. " He was a man 
of barricades. He did not seem to think that paving- 
stones were made to walk on; he only cared to see them 
heaped up across the street for the protection of armed 
patriots. . . . Wherever there was a chance of being 
killed he was sure to be. . . . He was a madman, but he 
was a hero." 1 

In justice to the men of 1871 we must admit their 
bravery. These French Communards did not, like their 
predecessors who composed the Commune of 1792, sit 
safely behind thick walls or take refuge in cellars whilst 
the crowd they had set in motion bore the brunt of the 
battle on the great days of tumult ; the men of 1871 went 
boldly out into the streets to face the fire of the soldiery, 
and many died fighting, fired with enthusiasm to the last. 
But alas! to what purpose? If the Government had 
proved incompetent the Commune proved more incom- 
petent still. And as in all anarchic movements it was 
inevitably the most violent — more than this, the most 
criminal — elements that obtained control, M. Enault 
declares that no less than 52,000 foreigners and 17,000 
released convicts took part in the scenes that followed. 2 
Under these influences the war on civilization planned 
by Weishaupt and inaugurated by the Terror of 1793 broke 
out afresh. As in 1848, all the memories of that earlier 
period — fatal precedent from which the French seemed 
1 Leighton, op. cit. 115, 116. 2 Paris brUle, p. 28. 



210 WORLD REVOLUTION 

destined never to depart — were once again evoked. A 
" Comite de Salut Public " was formed, the calendar of 
1793 revived, and with a pitiable poverty of imagination 
even the names of the newspapers were copied from those 
of the first Revolution — the Cri du Peuple of Babeuf , the 
Pire Duchesne of Hebert, in which the gutter verbiage of 
the famous " stove merchant " was faithfully reproduced 
by his imitator Vermesch. 

Naturally the de-Christianization of Paris inaugurated 
in 1793 entered again largely into the programme. The 
same desecration of the churches took place; the images 
of the saints were broken or tricked out in ignoble disguises, 
the pictures torn, plate and ornaments pillaged; parties 
played at cards on the high altar, orators mounted the 
pulpit to blaspheme God. In the church of Saint Eustache, 
where the font had been filled with tobacco and the statue 
of the Holy Virgin dressed up asa " vivandidre^a crowd 
of " female patriots," of the same class as those who had 
seduced the soldiery in 1789, declaimed the doctrines of the 
social revolution: " Marriage, citizenesses, is the greatest 
error of ancient humanity. To be married is to be a slave. 
..." A tall gaunt woman, with a nose like the beak of 
a hawk and a jaundice-coloured complexion, demanded 
amidst thunders of applause that the Commune should no 
longer recognize marriage by according pensions to the 
legitimate as well as the illegitimate wives of the National 
Guards: "The matrimonial state is a perpetual crime 
against morality. . . . We, the illegitimate companions, 
will no longer suffer the legitimate wives to usurp rights 
they no longer possess and which they ought never to have 
had at all. Let the decree be modified. All for the free 
women, none for the slaves! " l 

The honest women of the people took no part in these 
revolting scenes; indeed the " Ladies of the Market " 
showed themselves some of the most determined oppo- 
nents of disorder. 2 In the poor streets of Paris respect for 
religion still held sway, and women wept to see their 
children's coffins lowered into the grave without a prayer. 
There are mothers, writes our English contemporary, 

i Leighton, op. cit. p. 282. 2 Paris br tile, p. 208. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 211 

" quite unworthy of course to bear the children of patriots, 
who do not want their dear ones to be buried like dogs; 
who cannot understand that to pray is a crime, and to 
kneel down before God an offence to humanity, and who 
are still weak enough to wish to see a cross planted on the 
tombs of those they have loved and lost! Not the cross of 
the nineteenth century — a red flag! " * 

This attitude on the part of the people of Paris natur- 
ally proved exasperating to the makers of World Revo- 
lution. Bakunin, like his prototype Marat, despaired of 
them altogether. 

" The cause is lost," he wrote from Locarno, on the 9th of 
April; " it seems that the French, the working-class itself, are 
not much moved by this state of things. Yet how terrible the 
lesson is! But it is not enough. They must have greater calam- 
ities, ruder shocks. Everything makes one foresee that neither 
one nor the other will be wanting. And then perhaps the demon 
will awake. But as long as it slumbers we can do nothing. It 
would really be a pity to have to pay for the broken glasses, 
it would in fact be quite useless. Our task is to do the prepara- 
tory work, to organize and spread out so as to hold ourselves 
in readiness when the demon shall have awoken." 2 

But as far as the true people of Paris were concerned 
the demon never did awake, and it was a gang of foreign 
adventurers, " the most horrible horde that ever invaded 
civilization," 3 which carried out the pillage and burnings, 
the outrages and murders that followed on each other 
throughout those dreadful three days of May 

Bakunin's claim to responsibility in these happenings 
finds confirmation in the words of Fribourg, one of the 
original founders of the Internationale: " Personally we 
firmly believe that the decrees of spoliation, the arbitrary 
arrests, the shooting of the hostages, and the systematic 
incendiarism of the capital are the work of the Russo- 
German party." 4 In other words, they were the work of 
German Illuminism and of its development in the Alliance 
Sociale Democratique. 

1 Leighton, p. 117. Note adds: " Early in April the Commune forbade 
divine service in the Pantheon. They cut off the arms of the cross, and 
replaced it by the red flag during a salute of artillery." 

2 Correspondance de Bakounine, p. 350. 3 Paris brUle, p. 28. 
4 Fribourg, V Association Internationale des Travailleurs, p. 143. 



212 WORLD REVOLUTION 

The prelude to this final stage of the revolution was 
the entry of the Versailles troops into Paris, five days after 
the destruction of the Colonne Venddme. On the 16th of 
May the famous monument, erected in honour of French 
victories and now declared to be an insult to the principle 
of Internationalism, had been overthrown by order of the 
Commune — influenced, it was said, by Prussian gold * — 
whilst German officers looked on, rejoicing. 2 This outrage 
to the national traditions of France infuriated the army 
of Versailles, which had been recently reinforced by 
returned prisoners from Germany, and on the 21st of May 
an entry was made to the capital through the Porte de 
Saint-Cloud. The " bloody week " of street fighting fol- 
lowed. By the third day the Versailles troops had reached 
the approaches to the Tuileries, and it was then that the 
generals of the Commune, Brunei and Bergeret, set fire to 
the palace and the Rue Royale. 

Once again the idea of war on cities, that had originated 
with Weishaupt, that had been carried out by the Ter- 
rorists of 1793 and revived by the Nihilists who had 
advocated the burning of towns, was put into practice 
with terrible effect. Amongst the dregs of the populace, 
wretched, drink-sodden old women, degenerate boys, 
armed with paraffin, set out to burn down Paris. 3 The plan 
had evidently long been premeditated in Germany; eight 
months before that terrible night of May 23, a cartoon had 
appeared in the shop windows of German towns depicting 
Paris in flames, with Germania above triumphant, and, 
beneath, the words: " Gef alien, gef alien ist Babylon die 
Stolze " (Babylon the mighty is fallen, is fallen!) 4 

Nearly a hundred years earlier, Weishaupt, the arch- 
enemy of civilization, had declared, " The day of confla- 
gration will come!" Now it had come, and Paris, once the 
centre of the world's civilization, was to be burnt to the 
ground. 

It cannot be doubted that the total destruction of the 

j" 1 Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 253. 

2 Bonnechose, Histoire de France, ii. 729. 

3 Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 258, 262; Leighton, op. cit. p. S39. 

4 This cartoon is reproduced in Le Fond de la societe sous la Commune* 
by C. A. Dauban. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 213 

city was desired by the enemies of France, and if this plan 
was not realized the havoc worked was terrible enough. 
The Palace of the Tuileries reduced to ashes, the Ministry 
of Finances, the Palace of the Legion of Honour, the Palais 
de Justice, the Hotel de Ville with its treasures of art and 
priceless national archives — in a word the glory of old 
France lost to the world for ever — numerous houses in the 
Rue de Bac, the Rue de Lille, the Rue Royale, turned into 
rows of blackened ruins; and so little did the incendiaries 
concern themselves with the cause of the people that the 
Bureau de l'Assistance Publique, that existed solely to 
relieve distress, besides several houses belonging to it, of 
which the revenues belonged to the poor, were consumed 
by the names. The granaries containing corn, wine, oil, 
and other provisions destined to relieve the sufferings of 
Paris famished by the siege shared a like fate. 1 

On the evening of the following day the horrible mas- 
sacring of hostages was carried out. Six victims, including 
the Archbishop of Paris and four other priests who had 
been imprisoned seven weeks earlier, were shot down 2 in 
cold blood at the prison of La Roquette ; in vain the poor 
women of the district with tears and cries besought for the 
life of their pastor the aged Abbe Deguerry, cure of La 
Madeleine; the massacrers, faithful to the traditions of 
September 1792, dragged him to his death amidst the 
curses and invectives of his parishioners. 3 All died with the 
courage of their eighteenth century predecessors in mar- 
tyrdom. At the last moment the Archbishop, hearing the 
word liberty uttered by one of his murderers, said with 
dignity, " Do not pronounce that word of liberty; it 
belongs only to us who die for liberty and faith." 4 

As in September 1792, men of the people were not 
spared, and on the 27th of May a general massacre of the 
prisoners, including 66 gendarmes, took place. Amongst 
these was an unfortunate man, the father of eight children, 
accused of having stolen the blouse and blue trousers he 
wore, who met with a fearful death at the hands of a mob 
led by a revolutionary Amazon armed with a chassepot. 5 

1 Paris br&le, p. 203. 2 Bonnechose, op. cit. ii. 733. 

8 Beaumont Vassy, La Commune de Paris, p. 118. 

4 Bonnechose, ii. 733. 5 Leighton, op. cit. p. 327. 



214 WORLD REVOLUTION 

But the plan of the Illuminati for the destruction of 
civilization was once more frustrated. Civilization had 
risen in self-defence as civilization will always rise, and 
the fiercer the onslaught the more furious will be the 
reaction. When the struggle between the revolutionary 
army of the Commune and the forces of law and order had 
ended in a victory for the latter, thousands of victims 
strewed the streets of Paris; according to Prince Kropot- 
kine, no less than 30,000 men, women, and children per- 
ished in the fray. But what were these to the Anarchists 
who, according to Marx, regarded the people as " cannon 
fodder " (chair a canon) on the day of revolution? 1 

So ended the third experiment in revolutionary govern- 
ment carried out on unhappy France. Even Mr. Adolphe 
Smith, who had hoped great things of the Commune 
admits its incompetence. Sanguine revolutionists after 
1871, he writes, " began to realize the innate weakness of 
mere theories divorced from administrative capacity." 

They saw that even when in possession of one of the fairest 
cities of Europe — with the bank of France in their hands, an 
enthusiastic army at their command, weapons and munitions 
of war innumerable — while the country was disorganized, the 
regular army flying in terror before the insurrection for it could 
not rely upon its own soldiers — still the Commune, though so 
strong and successful, was unable to accomplish anything. The 
leaders frittered away the precious moments for action in futile 
discussions and squabbles, till the reaction, gathering strength, 
organized its scattered forces and crushed them. The similitude 
of this with the position of Petrograd before and after the 
Bolsheviks seized the reins of government will not fail to be 
noticed by every observer. 2 

Yet in spite of its ghastly fiasco the regime of the Com- 
mune met with unanimous applause from the Inter- 
nationale; at Zurich, Geneva, Brussels, Leipzig, members 
vied with each other in extolling the bloody deeds com- 
mitted during those terrible months of March to May. An 
English Internationalist declared that ""the good time 
was really coming," and that " soon we shall be able to 
dethrone the Queen of England, turn Buckingham Palace 

1 V Alliance Sociale Democratique, p. 15. 

2 Unpublished work by Mr. Adolphe Smith entitled The Betrayal of the 
International, 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 215 

into a workshop and pull down the York Column as the 
noble French people had pulled down the Vend6me 
column." x 

Bakunin, who now apparently considered that the 
demon had awoken, admiringly described the French pro- 
letariat as " the modern Satan, the author of the sublime 
insurrection of the Commune." 2 

Marx, not to be left out of the movement, which in 
reality had, in its negation of the State, been conducted on 
principles opposed to his avowed opinions, now published 
a panegyric of the Commune entitled The Civil War in 
France, in which he referred to the State as " that parasite 
which exploits and hinders the free movements of society." 
How are we to reconcile this with Marx's advocacy of 
State Socialism? 3 

Guillaume, commenting on Marx's sudden volte-face, 
asks whether he had really become converted to the 
principles of federalism, and quotes Bakunin as declaring 
that the power of the Commune had proved so formidable 
that even the Marxians had been obliged to take off their 
hats to it. But the measure of Marx's sincerity in writing 
his panegyric of the Commune was revealed later when 
his correspondence with his friend Sorge was published 
in 1906. It seems that at the end of 1871 several refugees 
of the Commune who had fled to London and Geneva 
refused to obey his commands. Thereupon Marx wrote to 
Sorge: 

And that is my reward for having wasted nearly five months 
working for the refugees, and for having saved their honour by 
the publication of the Address on the Civil War. 4 

Thus Marx, with his superb talent for using everything 
that could serve his purpose, turned the anarchic regime 
of the Commune to account. But now the moment had 
come to suppress that dynamic force which threatened his 
supremacy and to concentrate his attention on the Anar- 
chists of the Internationale. 

1 Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 252. 

2 Guillaume, Documents, ii. 253. 

8 First formulated in his Communist Manifesto: " to centralize all 
instruments of production in the hands of the State." 
4 Guillaume, Documents, ii. 192. 



216 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Anarchy v. Socialism 

The years that followed on the revolution of 1871 were 
mainly occupied by the struggle between the two groups 
represented by Marx and Bakunin. 

Until this date the words " Anarchy " and " Anar- 
chist," though claimed by Proudhon and Bakunin, were 
seldom used, and the word " Socialist " was employed to 
cover both the warring factions. But from 1871 onwards 
we find the rival camps ranging themselves definitely 
beneath their opposing standards, and Socialism more and 
more becoming the label of the Marxists. The difference 
between the aims of the two creeds has thus been clearly 
denned by Malon : r 

The State Socialism of Marx was comprised in the conquest 
of political power, that is to say of the State, by the working- 
class which has for its historic mission to put an end to the 
class war by the abolition of classes, and to the present economic 
miseries and contradictions by " the nationalization of produc- 
tion and distribution of wealth." 

Bakunin, on his part, summed up his programme in 
these words: 

Abolition of the State in all its religious, juristic, political, 
and social realizations; reorganization by the free initiative 
of free individuals in free groups. It was this formula that 
became later that of Anarchy. 

And we might add, still later, that of Syndicalism. So the 
old antagonism between Liberty and Equality flamed out 
afresh in the great struggle between Marx and Bakunin 
which was to rend the Internationale in twain. Thus 
Bakunin, referring to the State Socialism of the Marxists, 
vehemently declared it to be " the vilest and the most 
formidable lie which our century has engendered — the 
official democratism and the red bureaucracy." 2 " I 
abominate Communism," he had declared to the Peace 
Congress at Berne in 1869, " because it is a denial of free- 
dom and I cannot understand anything human without 
freedom." 3 On the other hand, Maurice Hess, the 
Marxian, had pointed out that between the Collectivists 

1 Article on the Internationale in La Nouvelle Revue, xxvi. 753. 

2 Correspondance de Bakounine, p. 219. 

8 E. V. Zenker, Anarchism (£ng. trans., 1898), p. 148. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 217 

and the Anarchists of the Internationale " there was all the 
difference which exists between civilization and barbarism, 
between liberty and despotism, between citizens condemn- 
ing every form of violence and slaves addicted to the use 
of brutal force." * 

It was not, however, only the bureaucracy of the 
Marxians that roused the wrath of Bakunin, but their 
pan-Germanism, which since 1870 had become more and 
more apparent. " The dream of the Socialists who swear 
by the head of Marx," he wrote to La Liberte of Brussels 
in 1872, " is the German hegemony, is German omnipo- 
tence (la toute puissance germanique), at first intellectual 
and moral, and later on material." 2 

But it was the Marxians who began the attack. 

Already in the spring of 1871 Marx, Outine, Hess, 
Liebknecht, Bebel, in a word all the Germans and German- 
Jews of the Internationale, 3 displayed less concern over 
the regime of the Commune than over their own war on 
the Alliance Sociale Democratique. To turn Bakunin and 
his followers out of the Internationale and remain himself 
in possession of the field now became the great aim of the 
man whom his Jewish disciples were fond of referring to as 
" the modern Moses." 4 

Fortunately for Marx a pretext was provided by the 
discovery that Netchaieff, Bakunin 's former ally, had been 
guilty of fraud, and at the Congress of the Internationale 
in London in 1871 the General Council, led by Marx took 
the resolution to make an inquiry into the participation 
of Bakunin and the Alliance Sociale Democratique in the 
Affaire Netchaieff. The Jew Nicholas Outine was ordered 
to draw up the report. Outine, who throughout acted 
consistently as the " acolyte of Marx," had already made 
an attempt to eject the Alliance from the Internationale 

1 Oeuvres de Bakounine, v. 223. 2 iv. Ibid. 341. 

8 Guillaume, referring to the Jews in the Internationale, enumerates as 
the most important Marx, Outine, Maurice Hess, Borkheim, the editor 
of the Zukunft, a Socialist paper entirely controlled by Jews, Hepner, 
editor of the Volksstaat, and Frankel, member of the Paris Commune. 
Guillaume adds: " Calumniated and vilified by a pack of intriguers, we 
have been obliged to state that some of the most violent (les plus acharnes 
contre nous) were German and Russian Jews who seemed to hold together 
by a sort of esprit de corps " (Documents de I' Internationale, ii. 157 note). 

4 Guillaume, Documents, ii. 297. 



218 WORLD REVOLUTION 

by a ruse. At a meeting of the Geneva sections of the 
association that same spring, he and his allies had declared 
that the Alliance had never been received into the Inter- 
nationale at all, and when in reply to this statement the 
secretary of the Alliance produced the original letters 
signed by Eccarius and Jung in the name of the Inter- 
nationale announcing that the General Council had 
admitted the Alliance on the 25th of August 1869, Outine 
calmly replied that the letters were forgeries and brought 
forward a Russian Jewess, Mme. Dmitrieff, who had just 
arrived from London, in support of this assertion. 1 

A conference was finally arranged between the two 
factions on the 25th of July, 1871, at which Jung himself 
presided and Marx and Engels were present. The docu- 
ments were again produced, and this time Jung was 
obliged to confess that he had signed the second, whilst 
Engels, after a quarter of an hour of prevarications, mum- 
bled that it was impossible to deny either of the letters. 
As to Marx, Guillaume observes: " The great man, usually 
so sure of himself in the midst of his courtiers, was dumb- 
founded. He was caught in the flagrant delit of a lie and 
his act was authentically proved." 2 

Marx afterwards retaliated by accusing Bakunin of 
duplicity, declaring that in 1869 he had believed the 
Alliance to have been dissolved whilst in reality it con- 
tinued to work in secret, and that " by means of this 
freemasonry its existence was not even suspected by the 
great mass of the Internationals." 3 

It is impossible to disentangle the truth from all this 
web of lying and intrigue; both sides had, as we know, 
accepted the doctrine that the end justifies the means, and 
both lied freely to obtain the mastery. Suffice it then to 
say that finally, at the Hague Congress of the Inter- 
nationale held in 1872, the London General Council — 
"by a fictitious majority," says Prince Kropotkine — 
excluded the Bakuninists and the Jura Federation they 
had formed from the Internationale. The latter now s 
moved its headquarters to New York and four years later 

1 Guillaume Documents, ii. 157. 2 Ibid. ii. 176, 177. 

8 V Alliance Sociale DSmocratique. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1871 219 

quietly expired at Philadelphia. So ended the great asso- 
ciation which for twelve years had spread terror through- 
out Europe. Long before its death the working-men had 
lost all faith in it, and the engineers of Brussels, led by it 
into an abortive strike, had denounced it as " the leprosy 
of Europe " and " the Company of Millionaires on paper." 1 

As a means for ameliorating the conditions of Labour 
it had proved from 1864 a fraud, as a barrier against inter- 
national conflicts it had proved its futility in 1870, 
throughout its whole career it had existed merely as a 
hotbed of intrigue — mainly pan-German — and all its 
protestations of fraternity had led only to the old conflict 
between the rival forces of revolution. The inner history 
of the Internationale, like the history of all revolutionary 
organizations from the Terror onwards, is simply a series 
of petty rivalries and of miserable quarrels between the 
leaders, conducted without the faintest regard for the 
interests of the people whom such demagogues profess to 
represent. Readers have merely to glance through the 
voluminous Documents de V Internationale by James 
Guillaume (4 vols. 1907), the best official record of the 
proceedings of the society, to convince themselves of the 
truth of this assertion. Further light has been thrown on 
the Marxian intrigues by Guillaume 's recent brochure 
Karl Marx, pan-Germaniste (Armand Colin, 1915), and 
by Edmond Laskine's admirable work, U Internationale 
et le pan-Germanisme (Floury, 1916). In France, there- 
fore, the Marxian legend has been completely shattered, 
and it is doubtless owing to the fact that none of these 
books have been translated into English that a belief in 
Marx still survives in this country. Mr. Adolphe Smith's 
very valuable pamphlet is the only English work of this 
kind known to the present writer, and it should be scat- 
tered broadcast through the land. 2 

On the other hand, the Marxians' accusations against 

1 Heckethorn's Secret Societies, ii. 235. 

2 The Pan-German Internationale, articles by Adolphe Smith, Official 
Anglo-French Interpreter from 1882 at the Congresses of the Internationale. 
Reprinted from the Times, price 3d. Copies may be obtained from Adolphe 
Smith, 17 Scarsdale Terrace, Kensington, W.8. It is regrettable that 
Mr. Smith's larger work, The Betrayal of the Internationale, of which he has 
kindly allowed me to make use, has not yet been published. 



220 WORLD REVOLUTION 

the Anarchists may be read in the pamphlet V Alliance 
Sociale Dtmocratique, published by order of the Congress 
of La Haye in 1873 ; the first part written by Engels and 
Laf argue, the conclusion by Marx and Engels with " the 
object of killing Bakunin dead (le tuer raide mort)." l 

After perusing the case for both sides in this final 
dispute it is impossible to retain any illusions on the char- 
acter of either Marx or his opponent ; we need not, there- 
fore, have recourse to anti-Socialist literature in order to 
realize to the full the perfidy and hypocrisy of that bogus 
company that called itself " The International Associa- 
tion of Working Men." 

1 Guillaume, Documents, iii. 148. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 

Nihilism in Russia — Murder :: Aiexarier II. — The revived ILiurrjurati — 
Johann Most — Rr vcika&kmary r:rrress in London — Anarcrist 
outrages in Western Europe — Fenianism — British Socialism. 

Although Anarchy had been vanquished in the Inter- 
nationale, it was Anarchy not State Socialism that after 
the revolution of 1S71 obtained control of the revolution- 
ary movement. Revolts against the Marxian autocracy 
of the Internationale — " the Marxist synagogue " * as 
Bakunin described it — broke out in Italy. Spain. Bel- 
gium, and in the Jura Federation that had been organized 
by the expelled Anarchists. 2 

But it was in Russia that Anarchy found its natural 
home, where the ground had been prepared by the propa- 
ganda of the Nihilists carried on indefatigably since the 
ear. es, Romanti: Russian writers are anxious to 

make us believe that Xihilistn — of which the name first 
appears in Turgheniefi's novel, Fathers and 5;;: 5. in 1S61 
— was some kind of mystic creed indigenous to Russia. 
but to the readers of this book the tenets of the Nihilists 
will seem strangely f ami liar . Thus, for e x a i n pk Baz a roff, 
the hero of TurgheniefFs romance, explains that '"it is 
necessary above all to clear the ground. Later, when all 
institutions have been destroyed, when a tabula rasa is 
complete, then existing forces, then humanity will crystal- 
lize again in new institutions which will no doubt be 
appropriate to surrounding conditions." The words have 
a reminiscent echo of Rabaud de St. Etienne's: " Every- 

1 Errcre Z-::::li. L' Akz- :' :: . z 116. 
* Kropotkine, Modern Science and Anarchism, pp. 43, 62. 

221 



222 WORLD REVOLUTION 

thing, yes, everything must be destroyed, since everything 
must be remade." 

The Nihilist, Prince Kropotkine informs us, " declared 
war upon what may be described as ' the conventional lies 
of civilized mankind ' ... he refused to bow before any 
authority except that of reason. ..." Accordingly he 
" broke, of course, with the superstitions of his fathers " 
with regard to religion, whilst in the matter of social 
relations " he assumed a certain external roughness " — 
as a protest against conventional politeness. " Art was 
involved in the same sweeping negation," the Nihilist's 
attitude being expressed in the words: " A pair of boots is 
more important than all your Madonnas and all your 
refined talk about Shakespeare." 1 

The " equality of the sexes " was a fundamental doc- 
trine of Nihilism which, as the Pere Deschamps points out, 
is only another expression for the destruction of family 
life. 2 " According to the Nihilists, men and women live 
together in little groups where all is in common. In order 
to be wholly independent the woman must herself provide 
her livelihood." Maternity being an inequality of nature, 
" the Nihilist woman therefore willingly abandons " her 
offspring. 3 

Above all, of course, religion must be destroyed, and 
Stepniak admiringly describes the campaign carried on by 
the band of enthusiastic propagandists who preached 
materialism throughout Russia both in speech and print. 
1 'Atheism excited people like a new religion. The zealous 
went about, like veritable missionaries, in search of living 
souls, in order to cleanse them from the abomination of 
Christianity." 4 

Had not Anacharsis Clootz done likewise up to the 
very foot of the scaffold? What indeed is there in all this 
but the resuscitated plan of Illuminism? Pere Deschamps' 
suggestion that Nihilism was simply the Eastern branch 
of Bakunin's Alliance Sociale Democratique modelled on 
Weishaupt's Order, goes less to the root of the matter 

1 Kropotkine, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, ii. 86, 88. 

2 Deschamps, ii. 574. 

8 Fribourg, L' Association Internationale des Travailleurs, p. 184. 
4 Stepniak. Underground Russia, p. 5. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 223 

than his further explanation that the youthful philosophers 
of Russia had gone to the fountain-head by studying at 
German universities. Turghenieff himself had spent three 
years in Berlin reading Hegelian philosophy. It was 
therefore directly from Germany that Illuminism under 
its new name of Nihilism travelled to Russia. The very 
name itself had been foretold by Joseph de Maistre in 
the first years of the century when he declared that 
the doctrines of Illuminism would lead men to become 
" rienistes." 1 

Yet if the seed was not indigenous to Russia the soil 
was peculiarly adapted to its growth. The theory that 
" civilization is all wrong," however preposterous when 
applied to Western Europe, had something to commend it 
in the case of Russia. There civilization, consisting in a 
foreign veneer hastily applied to a rude natural surface, 
might appear even to non-anarchic minds " all wrong " — 
a process that needed redoing from the outset. 

Civilization to be of any value must be necessarily of 
slow growth, must moreover begin at the bottom — in the 
hearts not in the manners of the people. England had her 
Alfred the Great, her Richard Cceur de Lion; France her 
Saint Louis and her Henry IV. These and other great 
founders of their civilizations had implanted deep down 
in the life of each nation those principles of humanity and 
compassion, of honour and of justice which in the latter 
country even the Revolution could not entirely eradicate. 

Russia had never known these early influences ; founded 
on Tartar instead of Roman ideas, she had remained sunk 
in barbarism until Peter the Great began his veneering 
process which, applied to the rude surface of Russian life, 
resulted in a form of culture both premature and unnatural. 
To change the simile, such civilization as Russia had 
attained in the nineteenth century was not the natural 
growth of the soil; it was a German civilization wholly 
foreign to the " genius " of her people. There was much 
that was good and wholesome in the life of the Russian 
peasants. De Custine declared that it was worth coming 
to Russia if only to see " the pure image of patriarchal 

1 Deschamps, ii. 586. 



224 WORLD REVOLUTION 

society " and the " celestial faces " of the old peasants 
seated with dignity at the end of the day before the 
threshold of their cottages. 1 " One must go into the inte- 
rior of Russia to know what primitive man was worth and 
all that the refinements of society have made him lose. 
I have said and I repeat it ... in this patriarchal 
country, it is civilization that spoils man." 2 

It is easy then to understand how the " illuminated " 
doctrine of a return to Nature might find an echo in the 
least anarchic minds when applied to Russia, and if it had 
been only this foreign and artificial civilization the Nihil- 
ists had set out to destroy, who could have blamed them? 
If, further, they had had anything better to offer in its 
place, who could have failed to applaud them? But the 
tragedy of Russia is never to have been allowed to 
develop along her own national lines; she had been made 
by the Romanovs to imitate Western civilization, now she 
was to be taught by the revolutionaries to imitate Western 
methods of overthrowing it. Bakunin had raged against 
German Petersbourgeois Imperialism (cet imperialisme 
peter sbourgeois allemand), and it was German Illuminism 
his followers brought to Russia in its stead. The tendency 
to anarchy latent in the Russian nature, as exemplified in 
the Baron Ungern von Sternberg, was to be exploited in 
the interests of World Revolution. For, in spite of the 
serenity described by de Custine as characteristic of the 
Russian peasant in his normal moments, he responds only 
too readily to suggestions of violence. And when we 
consider this peculiarity, when we remember the tendency 
to drunkenness and to brutality that underlies his surface 
impassiveness we realize the fearful danger of taking 
from him the only restraints he knew — respect for God 
and the Czar. 

Was the Imperial Government, then, to tolerate the 
campaign of insubordination and of militant atheism con- 
ducted by the Nihilists from 1866 onwards? 

Can it be seriously maintained that any government 
would have been doing its duty if it had not protected 
the simple peasantry from these disintegrating doctrines? 
1 La Russie en 1839, iv. 9, 10. * Ibid. iv. 97. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 225 

What could it do but arrest, imprison, exile, and suppress 
by all means in its power the germ-carriers who would 
have infected the whole life of the people? If the methods 
adopted resembled those of Eastern potentates rather than 
those of our own enlightened legislators, it must be 
remembered that the rulers of Russia can no more than 
their subjects be judged by Western standards. Moreover, 
without condoning the brutality of the repression exercised, 
it must be recognized that a revers du medallion exists. 

Let us put ourselves in the place of Nicholas I., who has 
been persistently represented as an intractible autocrat. 
Ascending the throne with the warning of the French 
Revolution ringing in his ears, he found himself immedi- 
ately confronted by the Dekabrist outbreak, obviously 
engineered by secret forces — an experience that left a 
deep impression on his mind. Yet, in spite of this, have 
we-not seen him visiting Robert Owen at New Lanark, and 
in 1839 receiving deputations of serfs begging to be trans- 
ferred to the royal domains, assuring them, moreover, of 
his desire for their emancipation — alas, with what fatal 
results! No wonder, then, that we find him declaring: 
" Despotism exists in Russia since it is the essence of my 
government, but it is in accord with the genius of the 
nation." l Three hundred years earlier the Austrian 
ambassador to Moscow had asked whether it was the 
character of the Russian nation that had made autocrats, 
or autocrats that had made the character of the Russian 
nation, 2 and de Custine, echoing the question in 1839, gives 
as his opinion: " If the iron rod that directs this still 
brutalized people were to cease for an instant to weigh 
on it, the whole of society would be overthrown." 3 

We have only to study the history of Russia through- 
out the nineteenth century to realize that every step 
towards reform became the signal for a fresh outbreak of 
revolutionary agitation. The Nihilist movement followed 
directly on the era of reform inaugurated by Alexander II. 
The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 did nothing to allay 
agitation, and if, as we are assured, the measure failed to 

1 de Custine, La Russie en 1839, ii. 46. 
2 Ibid. i. 241. s Ibid. ii. 217. 



226 WORLD REVOLUTION 

satisfy the peasants we must at least recognize the sin- 
cerity of the Emperor's intentions. To turn against him at 
this juncture was naturally to drive him into reaction and 
to arrest the whole movement of reform. 

It cannot be too often repeated — violence begets 
violence ; and if we are to see in Nihilism the outcome of 
repression, as truly must we recognize in so-called " Czar- 
ism " the result of agitation. The revolutionaries plotted 
secretly against the State, and the State defended itself by 
the secret methods of " the Third Section " ; the authori- 
ties forbade the circulation of seditious pamphlets, and the 
traffickers in forbidden literature redoubled their efforts 
to smuggle it into the country; each side pitted its wits 
against the other, and thus the vicious circle once created 
could not be arrested. 

It was not, however, until after 1871 that the Russian 
revolutionary movement entered on its violent phases. 
The example of the Paris Commune then spread eastwards, 
and the revolutionaries, no longer known as Nihilists but 
as " Revolutionary Socialists," embarked on the series of 
outrages which marked the years 1873-1881. 

Much has been written about the heroism, the self- 
sacrifice, the burning enthusiasm of the " Tchaikovsky 
Circle " that was inaugurated toward the end of 1872 at 
St. Petersburg with ramifications at Moscow and other 
large towns of Russia. This little band of propagandists 
that consisted solely of upper-and middle-class intellec- 
tuals certainly showed themselves capable of great courage 
and endurance when the movement passed from words to 
deeds, but at the outset it is evident, from the accounts 
given by the members themselves, that they derived no 
small amount of enjoyment from the novelty and excite- 
ment the new life provided. 

One must know something of the Russian character 
from personal experience to understand this; to the 
Russian, intrigue, particularly of the political variety, is 
as the breath of life, and we have already seen how to 
Bakunin the preparing of revolution — the secret signs 
and codes, chemical inks, all-night discussions over tea and 
cigarettes — afforded a joy incomprehensible to the 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 227 

Western mind. More especially was this passion to be 
found in the young women of the country who hitherto 
had exercised in the service of the Czars their talent for 
secret political intrigue; Catherine the Great had made 
great use of these " Northern Aspasias " acting as her 
unofficial ambassadors and spies, and under Nicholas I. 
the same " organized feminine diplomacy " was continued 
by " political Amazons " whose passion for meddling in 
affairs of State absorbed them to the exclusion of all other 
matters — even love. 

It is easy to understand that to women of this type the 
revolutionary movement should have offered a career even 
more enticing; to the delights of intrigue were added the 
charm of novelty and the excitement provided by an ele- 
ment of danger. The young Russian girls with cropped 
hair, dressed in boyish garments, who crowded to Zurich 
as students — medical or otherwise — could enjoy all the 
sensation of an adventure, and on their return to Russia 
thousands of men and women students went to live in 
towns and villages to carry on Socialistic propaganda 
amongst the workers. To the young, the strong, and the 
adventurous this kind of life may well have proved con- 
genial; indeed in Prince Kropotkine's own account of his 
adventures as a member of the Tchaikovsky Circle we 
cannot fail to detect an afterglow of exhilaration. Throw- 
ing a peasant's shirt and coat over his silk undergarments 
this aristocratic anarchist would slip out of the Winter 
Palace at night and betake himself to the slums of St. 
Petersburg where meetings of the workers were held. 

To play at being peasants has frequently proved a 
pastime to jaded aristocracy, and Kropotkine, masquerad- 
ing as " Borodin " in a sheepskin, consulted as an oracle by 
the other sheepskins, evidently found these evenings more 
entertaining than the dreary formalities of St. Petersburg 
society. 

Peter Kropotkine, who may be regarded as the milder 
type of visionary anarchist, was born in 1842 at Moscow. 
Although a follower and an ardent admirer of Bakunin, 
Kropotkine in his private life showed himself greatly 
superior to his master. Unlike Bakunin he was a worker, 



228 WORLD REVOLUTION 

though not in the sense he implied in his writings. To 
identify himself with the " proletariat " in such phrases as 
" we shall succeed in getting our rights respected " is of 
course the purest affectation. Kropotkine, who had never 
worked with his hands but only with his brain, was 
essentially an aristocrat of the same variety as the aristo- 
crats of France who before 1789 loved to dilate on the 
necessity of destroying the existing order. The keynote 
of all Kropotkine' s writings is unreality, never does he at 
any point come to grips with life, and it is here he differs 
from Bakunin. The " Russian giant "was a realist, and 
in advocating revolution he knew perfectly well what 
revolution meant — violence, bloodshed, confusion, chaos 
— all things in which his soul delighted. On human 
nature, as we have seen, he entertained no illusions, and 
it was for criminals that he expressed his warmest sym- 
pathy. Kropotkine, less practical, or perhaps less honest, 
expressed a boundless belief in human nature; a disciple 
of Rousseau as well as of Weishaupt, he held that " the 
inequality of fortunes and conditions, the exploitation of 
man by man, the domination of the masses by a few, had 
in the course of ages undermined and destroyed the 
precious products of the primitive life of society " x — a 
passage that might well seem to be taken verbatim from 
the famous essay on " l'lnegalite des Conditions." 

With the same wild disregard for truth Kropotkine 
echoes Rousseau's panegyrics on the happiness and 
benevolence of savages, 2 " the fraternity and solidarity " 
that distinguishes tribal life, " the hospitality of primitive 
peoples, their respect for human life, compassion for the 
weak," and personal self-sacrifice. Arriving inevitably at 
the same conclusions as Weishaupt, Kropotkine argues 
that human nature being so inherently benign, all restraint 
should be removed, all law and government abolished, even 
murderers should go unpunished and criminals should " be 
soothed with fraternal care." 3 So identical are many of 
these theories with those of Weishaupt that it is impos- 
sible not to believe that, like Bakunin, he had fallen under 

1 Kropotkine, Paroles d'un revolte, p. 19. 
_ 2 Les Temps nouveaux, p. 21. 
3 Paroles d'un revolte, pp. 223, 242, 244. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 229 

the spell of Illuminism and was consciously working for the 
sect that had as its object the " universal revolution which 
should deal the death-blow to society." 

The connection between all the succeeding disciples of 
Weishaupt can only be established by comparing their 
writings, when it will become evident that passages so 
closely resembling each other cannot be attributed to mere 
coincidence, and the main ideas of World Revolution will 
be seen to descend in unbroken sequence from one revolu- 
tionary group to another. Indeed Kropotkine himself 
informs us that between the " Alliance Sociale Demo- 
cratique " of Bakunin and the secret societies of 1795 
there was " a direct affiliation." * If, then, Nihilism was 
working in conjunction with Bakunin's association — and 
we cannot doubt it — it is easy to see how the theories of 
the Philadelphes percolated to the Tchaikovsky Circle. 

It is thus that in Kropotkine's Paroles d'un rewlU, 
where more than in any other of his writings his programme 
of revolution is set forth, we seem to hear again the voice 
of that earlier Illuminatus Gracchus Babeuf, member of 
the Philadelphes and continuer of the plan of Weishaupt. 
Although not a Communist like Babeuf, Kropotkine advo- 
cates, for example, the same system of trade by barter. 
" Do you wish tools and machinery?" he asks the peas- 
ants; " you will come to an understanding with the workers 
of the towns, who will send them to you in exchange for 
your products " 2 and we are seriously asked to imagine 
life conducted by means of this continual weighing up of 
values — the peasant requiring a scythe despatching to 
the town a sitting of turkeys' eggs, and the worth being 
deemed insufficient, receiving in exchange a chisel — 
which he does not happen to want! 

Not merely in puerilities such as these does Kropotkine 
continue the tradition of Babeuf, but also in the organiza- 
tion of the coming revolution. Babeuf, it will be remem- 
bered, was the first to preach the " great day of the 
people" — the day whereon the maddened multitude 
should fling itself upon all wealth and property as the 

1 Kropotkine, The Great French Revolution, p. 580. 
2 Paroles d'un revolte, p. 166. 



230 WORLD REVOLUTION 

preliminary to Communism. This simple and expeditious 
method, long since abandoned by the Communists in 
favour of the gradual acquisition of political power, was 
now revived by the Anarchists with the object of inaugu- 
rating their rival system, and thus in his chapter on 
" Expropriation " we find Kropotkine reproducing almost 
verbatim the old programme of Babeuf . 

" General expropriation alone," writes Kropotkine, 
" can satisfy the multitude of sufferers and oppressed. 
From the domain of theory they must be made to enter 
that of practice. But in order that expropriation should 
answer to its principle, which is to suppress all private 
property and to give back all to all, it must be accom- 
plished on a vast scale. On a small scale we should see 
nothing but vulgar pillage; on a large one it is the begin- 
ning of social reorganization." 1 

But although Bakunin had declared that " robbery was 
one of the most honourable forms of Russian national 
life," and that " he who does not understand robbery can 
understand nothing in the history of the Russian masses," 2 
it appears that the plan of laying violent hands on all 
property was one to which the people could not be 
expected yet to rise: " It would be a fatal error," Kropot- 
kine observes regretfully, " to believe that the idea of 
expropriation has yet penetrated into the minds of all 
the workers and become one of those convictions for which 
an upright man is ready to sacrifice his life. Far from it !" 3 
And he goes on to explain the necessity of educating the 
people up to this sublime ideal. 

In order to persuade the Russian peasants to emulate 
those of France in the preceding century by seizing social 
riches, "we" — Revolutionary Socialists — he writes, 
" must work incessantly from this moment to disseminate 
the idea of expropriation by all our words and all our acts. 
. . . Let the word ' expropriation ' penetrate into every 
commune of the country, let it be discussed in every village, 
and become, for every workman and every peasant, an 
integral part of the word Anarchy, and then, only then, 

1 Paroles oVun revoke, p. 337. 

2 Words addressed to Students, by Bakunin and Netchaieff (1869). 
* Paroles d'un revolts, p. 320.' 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 231 

we shall be sure that on the day of the Revolution it will 
be on all lips, that it will rise formidable, backed by the 
whole people, and that the blood of the people will not 
have flowed in vain." 1 

Kropotkine's idol Marat himself could not have written 
a more direct incentive to violence, and when we consider 
that he was one of the leading members of the Tchaikovsky 
Circle, and that this was the kind of propaganda the band 
of heroic " missionaries " was engaged in carrying out 
amongst the people from 1872 onwards, we cannot wonder 
that the Government again saw fit to intervene. 

Thirty-seven provinces, a Government circular de- 
clared, had been " infected "by the Socialist contagion, 2 
and in 1878 wholesale arrests were ordered. Then the 
vicious circle began again: a propagandist. BoguljubofI, 
was knout ed by the police, and a woman revolutionary 
Vera Sassulitch, retaliated by attempting to shoot Trepoff, 
the Prefect of Police in St. Petersburg; Sassulitch was 
acquitted, but Kowalsky, the leader of a band of revolu- 
tionaries in Odessa, was shot, and in revenge Mesentsefl, 
head of the Third Section, was murdered by Kravchinsky 
(alias Stepniak) on the Xevsky Prospect. 

Then followed a series of attempts on the life of Alex- 
ander II. : in September 1879 the conspirators, led by 
Sophie Perovskaia and Leo Hartmann, formed a plan to 
blow up the Imperial train just outside Moscow, but only 
succeeded in destroying a train which did not contain the 
Emperor; in the following year two other Terrorists, 
Halturin and ScheliabofL succeeded in exploding a charge 
of dynamite beneath the dining-room of the Winter Pal- 
ace, but again the Emperor escaped without injury. 

Meanwhile Alexander II., with a newly appointed 
minister, Count Loris MelikofI, continued to work out 
plans for reform. MelikofI, whatever his shortcomings 
might be, was a man of far more liberal tendencies than his 
predecessors, and indeed we find a Finnish writer declaring 
that " some of the measures adopted by him should have 
shown to every thoughtful person that he was planning 

1 Paroles d'un revolte, p.*322. 
■ Stepniak, Underground Russia, p. 28. 



232 WORLD REVOLUTION 

the introduction of far-reaching reforms which might per- 
haps have led to the regeneration of Russia." 1 Whether 
this is so or not it is certain that Loris Melikoff was largely 
instrumental in deciding the Emperor to convoke an 
advisory assembly on the question of reforms, and, more 
important, it was Melikoff who finally on the 2nd of 
March 1881 laid before him the plan of a constitution. 

Are we to believe that, as has been already suggested, 
the word " Constitution " was the rallying cry of the 
secret societies? We have seen that in the French Revolu- 
tion both the framing of the Constitution in 1789 and its 
acceptance by the king in 1791 became the signals for 
fresh outbreaks of revolutionary fury; we have seen the 
Dekabrist outbreak of 1825 in Russia led by the same war- 
cry, and now again in Russia of 1881 the same strange 
phenomenon occurs. 

No sooner had Melikoff embarked on his career of 
reforms than an attempt had been made to murder him, 
and on the very day that Alexander II. signed the Con- 
stitution he was cut down by the hand of an assassin. 

Even Prince Kropotkine is obliged to recognize the 
Emperor's courage and noble self-sacrifice at that supreme 
moment when, at a signal from Sophie Petrovskaia, a 
bomb was thrown at the Imperial carriage as it passed 
along the road by the Catherine Canal; only the mounted 
Cossacks surrounding it received any injuries, and the 
coachman urged the Tsar to allow him to drive on out of 
danger. But Alexander refused to leave his followers to 
their fate and deliberately went forth to meet his death. 
As he walked towards the wounded and dying Cossacks 
lying in the snow beside his carriage a second assassin with 
inconceivable cowardice threw another bomb, and this 
time Alexander fell mortally wounded. 

The same night the draft of the Constitution bearing 
the Emperor's signature was torn into a hundred frag- 
ments by one of his son's advisers/ 

So ended for the moment all hope of reform in Russia. 
Inevitable reaction followed on this dastardly crime. The 
conspirators — Scheliaboff, Ryssakoff, Sophie Petrov- 

1 The Revolutionary Movement in Russia, by Konni Zilliacus, p. 101. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 233 

skaia, and two others — were put to death, it is said with 
fearful cruelty. 

But though we must execrate these barbarous methods 
of retaliation, we must surely admit that brutality was to. 
be found on both sides. If we pity the so-called " martyrs" 
of Imperial despotism may we not also ask : What pity had 
these men and woman felt for their victims — not only for 
the " agents of despotism " they set out to destroy, but for 
the innocent men of the people sacrificed with them? What 
regard had they shown for human life in their attempts to 
wreck the Imperial train? What of the engine-driver and 
other employes involved in the disaster? What of the 
many people actually killed and wounded in this attempt 
that miscarried? What of the thirty soldiers on duty who 
perished in the explosion at the Winter Palace? 

Let us pity, then, the ' 'martyrs " whose tortures no 
circumstances can justify, but let us reserve some pity 
for those humble and forgotten victims whom no 
revolutionary writer seems to consider of the slightest con- 
sequence. 

Anarchy in Western Europe 

In 1878 Western Europe experienced a repercussion of 
the Russian Terror, and the four leading Anarchists, 
Kropotkine, Cafiero, Malatesta, and Brousse, organized a 
worldwide scheme of violence described by them as the 
" Propaganda of the Deed," which found its first expres- 
sion in an attempt on the life of King Humbert of Italy. 
This outrage was followed by two attempts of the same 
kind directed against the Emperor William I. of Germany. 
If we are to believe Socialist writers, neither Hodel nor Dr. 
Karl Nobiling, who within a month fired at the Emperor in 
Berlin, had any connection with the Socialist or Anarchist 
movement, but served simply as a pretext for the anti- 
Socialist law which Bismarck passed triumphantly at the 
end of the year. This would be quite in keeping with Ger- 
man Imperial policy, which had always consisted in crush- 
ing at home the subversive forces it used so freely abroad, 
and it is quite possible that a half-witted youth such as 
Hodel — with photographs of the leading Socialists, 



234 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Liebkneckt and Bebel, placed in his pockets by the Berlin 
police — may have been hired for the deed, — agents 
provocateurs are, of course, a favourite resource of auto- 
cratic governments. 

Bismarck was thus able to nip in the bud not only 
Socialism but Anarchy, which in the person of Johann 
Most threatened to become a danger. 

Germany itself, as Zenker observes, " may be termed 
the most free from Anarchists of any country in Europe." x 
The " genius " of the German people is naturally disin- 
clined to Individualism, and whether in the form of 
Prussian militarism or of State Socialism always favours 
mass formation. It was thus by the Social Democrats 
themselves that Most was finally expelled. It will be noticed 
that whenever agitators threaten seriously to disturb the 
peace in Germany they are either summarily suppressed 
or used for export — preferably to England. Whether in 
accordance with this plan or on his own initiative Most 
came to London in 1879, where he organized a society 
called the " United Socialists," on the principles of Marx's 
Communist Manifesto, and having for its motto the 
Marxian battle-cry, " Workers of all countries, unite ! " 
At the same time he founded a secret association under 
the name of the " Propagandist Club " with a view to pre- 
paring " the general revolution." 2 

Yet in London he found an even less fruitful field for 
his labours than in Berlin. " England, the ancient refuge 
of political offenders," wrote Zenker in 1895, " although it 
has sheltered Bakunin, Kropotkine, Reclus, Most, Penkert, 
Louise Michel, Cafiero, Malatesta, and other Anarchist 
leaders, and still shelters some of them; although London 
is rich in Anarchist clubs and newspapers, meetings, and 
congresses; yet possesses no Anarchism ' native to the 
soil,' and has formed at all times merely a kind of exchange 
or market-place for Anarchist ideas, motive forces, and 
the literature of agitation. London is especially the head- 
quarters of German Anarchism; the English working- 
classes have, however, always regarded their ideas very 

1 E. V. Zenker, Anarchism (Eng. trans.), p. 238. 
* Dr. Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale^(18S^). 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 235 

coldly, while the Government have always regarded the 
eccentric proceedings of the Anarchists, as long as they 
confined themselves merely to talking or writing, in the 
most logical spirit of the doctrine of laisser-jaire" 1 
Indeed, so sturdy was the resistance offered by British 
Labour to Most's doctrines that when he endeavoured to 
publish his paper Freedom no printer could be found to set 
up the type. Alas! with the spread " of education " (?) 
such obstacles have long since been removed! 

In 1881 Prince Kropotkine visited London and found 
his reception equally discouraging. At his meetings he was 
obliged to talk to almost empty benches. Only in the 
towns of the North were anarchic doctrines met with some 
degree of enthusiasm. " The year I passed in London," he 
wrote despondently, " was a year of real exile. For one 
who held advanced Socialist opinions there was no atmos- 
phere to breathe in. There was no sign of that animated 
Socialist movement which I found so largely developed 
on my return in 1886. " 2 

What was it that provided the fresh impetus to the 
plan of World Revolution during those five years? In the 
past, as we have seen, the secret societies had provided the 
medium through which it was able to work, and after their 
absorption by the Internationale the so-called " Working 
Men's Association " had become the great cover for its 
activities. But now that the Internationale was dead it 
became necessary for the secret societies to reorganize, and 
it is at this crisis that we find that " formidable sect " 
springing to life again — the original Illuminati of 
Weishaupt. 

The facts about this resuscitated order are very diffi- 
cult to ascertain, for naturally they have been carefully 
kept from the public, and as in the case of the earlier 

1 Anarchism, p. 242. Zenker here displays remarkable discernment 
with regard to the attitude of the British Government, which is usually 
incomprehensible to foreigners, the prevalent idea on the Continent 
(especially in France) being that the tolerance displayed in this country 
towards alien agitators springs from a profound Machiavellian policy of 
encouraging subversive ideas for the weakening of rival powers. To the 
French mind our national naivete* is inconceivable; it cannot believe that 
we really regard these people as harmless eccentrics whom it would be 
tyrannical to suppress. 

3 Memoirs of a Revolutionary, ii. 251. 



236 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Illuminati of 1776 every effort has been made by interested 
writers to conceal the existence of the society, or, if it must 
be admitted, to represent it as a perfectly innocuous and 
unimportant association. 

What we do know definitely is that the society was 
refounded in Dresden in 1880 * — not in 1896 as it has been 
asserted — but it seems that its existence was not dis- 
covered until 1899. That it was consciously modelled on 
its eighteenth-century predecessor is clear from the fact 
that its chief, one Leopold Engel, was the author of a 
lengthy panegyric on Weishaupt and his Order, entitled 
Geschichte des Illuminaten Or dens (published in 1906), and 
in 1903 the original lodge at Ingoldstadt was restored. The 
official organ of the association from 1893 onwards was 
Das Wort. The society is still in existence and is believed 
to number adherents not only on the Continent but in our 
own country. 

Of course we shall be assured that this association had 
no connection with the course of the World Revolution; 
yet the fact remains that the year of 1880, in which it was 
refounded, inaugurated a recrudescence of the revolution- 
ary movement both in Europe and America. 

On the 20th of August of this same year a secret 
revolutionary congress was held at Wyden in Switzerland, 
which brought about, a definite rupture between the two 
German groups — the Social Democrats, led by Lieb- 
knecht and Bebel, formally expelling the Anarchists, led by 
Johann Most and Hasselmann. The theory of the latter as 
summarized by Zacher will be seen to be identical with the 
plan of the first Illuminati: ■" They held the existing order 
of things to be so corrupt that they we're ready to compass 
its overthrow by any means, however violent, without con- 
cerning themselves as to what should take the place of that 
which they destroyed. Their ideal was universal chaos, 
which must have as its necessary consequence the war of all 
against all and the break-up of all civilization." 2 

The connection between these plotters and the Nihilists 
of Russia is also clearly apparent. Two days after the 

1 " Die Religion in Geschichte ~und Gegenwart," Encyclopedia, edited 
by Friedrich Schiele and Leopold Zscharnack (Tubingen, 1912); article 
on " Illuminaten." 2 Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 237 

assassination of Alexander II. Hasselmann had addressed a 
meeting in New York, from which a message of sympathy 
was sent to the Russian Nihilists containing this phrase: 
" Brothers, we thoroughly approve your procedure. Kill, 
destroy, make of everything a tabula rasa till your enemies 
and ours have been annihilated." * The exact formula of 
Nihilism will be here recognized. v/ 

The Social Democrats differed only from the Anarchists 
in believing that this consummation should be effected by 
a more gradual process; and herein, as Zacher points out, 
lies their sole claim to " moderation " — if the Socialist 
party " attempts before the outer world to play the role of 
a peaceable party of reform, this is nothing more than a 
strategical manoeuvre in order to maintain a show of 
legality in the face of public opinion and not to frighten 
waverers away. . . . However divergent, therefore, may 
be the views of the two factions of German Socialists, i.e. 
the Social Democrats and Anarchists, with regard to the 
policy to be pursued and the final goal to be attained, yet 
they both rest upon the same foundation, that is, the con- 
viction that the present system cannot continue and must 
therefore be overthrown, which can only take place by 
forcible means.' ' 

Moreover, by the respective organs of the two parties, 
the Sozialdemokrat of the so-called moderates and the 
Freiheit of the Anarchists, we find the original ideas of 
Weishaupt, Clootz, and Bakunin clearly expressed. Thus, 
for example, in the matter of religion the Sozialdemokrat 
for the 25th of May 1880 declares that " it must be can- 
didly avowed Christianity is the bitterest enemy of Social 
Democracy. . . . When God is driven out of the brains 
of men, the whole system of privilege by the grace of God 
comes to the ground, and when Heaven hereafter is recog- 
nized as a big lie, men will attempt to establish Heaven 
here. Therefore whoever assails Christianity assails, at 
the same time, monarchy and capitalism." 2 

In the same manner the Freiheit for February 5, 1881, 
characterized Christianity as "a swindle invented by 
jugglers," and went- on to observe: "Do but read the 

1 Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale, p. 28. * Ibid. p. 25. 



238 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Bible through, supposing you can overcome the disgust 
that must seize you when you open the pages of the most 
infamous of all shameful books (" das infamste aller 
Schandbucher "), and you may soon observe that the God 
whom this twaddle inculcates is a million-headed, fire- 
spitting, vengeance-breathing, ferocious dragon." 1 

The war on the bourgeoisie waged by Marat, Robes- 
pierre, Clootz, and Hebert under the influence of the 
Illuminati is again declared by Freiheit for December 18, 
1880: " It is no longer aristocracy and royalty that the 
people can intend to destroy. Here perhaps but a coup de 
grace or two are yet needed. No, but in the coming 
onslaught the object is to smite the entire middle-class with 
annihilation.' ' Or again: " Extirpate all the contemptible 
brood! Such is the refrain of a revolutionary song. . . . 
Science now puts means into our hands which make it 
possible to arrange for the wholesale destruction of the 
brutes in a perfectly quiet and business-like fashion," etc. 2 

In July 1881 the Anarchists assembled a small Inter- 
national Revolutionary Congress in London under the 
aegis of Johann Most and the German- Jewish Nihilist, 
Hartmann — author of the plot for blowing up the Czar's 
trains two years earlier — at which Prince Kropotkine was 
present as delegate from the Anarchists of Lyons. Amongst 
the resolutions passed were the following: 

The revolutionaries of all countries are uniting into an 
" International Social Revolutionary Working Men's Associa- 
tion " for the purpose of a social revolution. The headquarters 
of the Association is at London, and sub-committees are formed 
in Paris, Geneva, and New York. . . . The committees of each 
country keep up regular correspondence amongst themselves 
and with the chief committee by means of intermediate addresses 
for the sake of giving continuous information; and it is their 
duty to collect money for the purchase of poison and arms, as 
well as to discover places suitable for the construction of mines, 
etc. To attain the proposed end, the annihilation of all rulers, 
ministers of State, nobility, the clergy, the most prominent 
capitalists, and other exploiters, any means are permissible, 
and therefore great attention should be given specially to the 
study of chemistry and the preparation of explosives, as being 
the most important weapons, etc. 3 

* 4 Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale, p.' 27. s Ibid. p. 26.) 

3 Zenker, Anarchism, p. 231; Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale, 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 239 

This was a little too much even for the confiding British 
Government, and; Most was at last condemned to eighteen 
months' imprisonment. Disgusted at this treatment, and 
still more at his difficulties with the printing of his Freheit, 
" Most, grumbling, left thankless old England and went to 
the New World, where however he was, if possible, taken 
even less seriously." * 

Prince Kropotkine also shook the dust of Britain off his 
feet. " My wife and I," he writes, " felt so lonely in 
London, and our efforts to awaken a Socialist movement 
in England seemed so hopeless, that in the autumn of 1882 
we decided to remove again to France. We were sure that 
in France I should soon be arrested; but we often said to 
each other, " Better a French prison than this grave." 2 

People who see in the Russian revolutionary movement 
only the natural result of repression will do well to note 
this passage. The amazing degree of liberty accorded by 
the British Government to the foreign agitator elicits from 
him no word of gratitude or appreciation, nor does it seem 
to occur to him that the fact of England being a free 
country might have something to do with the difficulty of 
rousing in it a spirit of rebellion. To Kropotkine this land 
of liberty, even more than Czarist Russia, was " a grave." 

It will be seen that the recrudescence of the revolution- 
ary movement cannot then be attributed to any subversive 
tendencies on the part of the people, but coincides exactly 
with the reorganization of the Illuminati. Even the most 
incredulous must surely admit it to be a curious coincidence 
that the society was reconstructed in 1880 and that on 
January 1, 1881— that is to say, the very year when 
Prince Kropotkine was lamenting the lack of Socialist 
enthusiasm amongst the British working-classes — Mr. 
Hyndman in the Nineteenth Century announced " The 
Dawn of a Revolutionary Epoch." It is evident that once 
again the people were not in the secret of the movement 
and that preparations were going forward without their 
knowledge in co-operation with foreign revolutionaries. 

1 Zenker, p. 243. 

2 Memoirs of a Revolutionist, ii. 254. In the light of this sentence it 
was amusing to find the British press referring to Prince Kropotkine in 
his obituary notices as " a sincere lover of England! " 



240 WORLD REVOLUTION 

The connection between the secret organizations of this 
date with German Illuminism is, moreover, clearly evident. 
Thus in London a lodge called by the same name as that to 
which the Illuminatus Gracchus Babeuf had belonged — 
the Philadelphes — carried on the rite of Memphis — - 
founded, it is said, by Cagliostro on Egyptian occultism — 
and initiated adepts into the higher grades of illuminized 
Freemasonry. 1 It was here that Johann Most and Hart- 
mann conducted their intrigues and that, in spite of the 
recalcitrance of the printers, they succeeded for a time 
in publishing their journal Freheit, and it was by asso- 
ciations of the same kind in New York, Chicago, and 
Philadelphia that both Most and Hartmann were received 
on their arrival in America. That these American associa- 
tions were continuously in touch with the Anarchist move- 
ment in England is clear from the fact that delegates had 
been sent by them to attend the aforesaid International 
Congress in London in July 1881 " with the object of 
studying chemical methods which might be useful to the 
work of revolution." 2 

In all these plottings England seems to have been the 
chief objective, as the following extraordinary passage that 
appeared in the New York World a year or two later 
testifies: 

" CA IRA! ficRASEZ LES INF AMES ! " 

The storm of revolution is looming and lowering over Europe 
which will crush out and obliterate for ever the hydra-headed 
monarchies and nobilities of the Old World. In Russia the 
Nihilist is astir. In France the Communist is the coming man. 
In Germany the Social Democrat will soon rise again in his 
millions as in the days of Ferdinand Lassalle. In Italy the 
Internationalist is frequently heard from. In Spain the marks 
of the Black Hand have been visible on many an occasion. In 
Ireland the Fenian and Avenger terrorise, and in England the 
Land League is growing. All cry aloud for the blue blood of the 
monarch and the aristocrat. They wish to see it pouring again 
on the scaffold. Will it be by the guillotine that cut off the head 
of Louis XVI.? Or by the headsman's axe that decapitated 
Charles I.? Or by the dynamite that searched out the vitals 
of Alexander the Second? Or will it be by the hangman's noose 
around the neck of the next British monarch? 

1 Deschamps, iii. 628. 2 Ibid. iii. 629. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 241 

No one can tell but that the coming English sans culottes, 
the descendants of Wamba the Fool and Gurth the Swineherd, 
will discover the necessary method and relentlessly employ it. 
They will make the nobles — who fatten and luxuriate in the 
castles and abbeys, and on the lands stolen from the Saxon, 
sacrilegiously robbed from the Catholic Church and kept from 
the peasantry of the villages and the labourer of the towns — 
wish they had never been born. They will be the executioners 
of the fate so justly merited by the aristocratic criminals of the 
past and the present. The cry that theirs is blue blood and 
that they are the privileged caste will not avail the men and 
women of rank when the English Republic is born. They will 
have to expiate their tyrannies, their murders, their lusts, and 
their crimes in accordance with the law given on Sinai amid the 
thunders of heaven: " The sins of the fathers shall be visited 
upon the children even unto the third and fourth generations." x 

Sir Lepel Griffin, who quotes " these ravings," adds the 
significant words: " It is necessary to note that the New 
York World is edited by a German." . 

If we do not believe in a connection between occult 
forces and world revolution how are we to explain these 
periodic outbursts of revolutionary fury proceeding not 
from the people but from the enemies of the country 
against which they are directed? According to Mr. Hynd- 
man, in the aforesaid article, the movement was largely 
developing under the auspices of the Jews, and it is inter- 
esting to compare this prophecy with that of Disraeli that 
had immediately preceded the 1848 explosion, for the 
point of view in both will be seen to be identical: 

The influence of the Jews at the present time is more notice- 
able than ever. . . . They are at the head of European capi- 
talists. ... In politics many Jews are in the front rank. The 
press in more than one European capital is almost wholly in 
their hands. The Rothschilds are but the leading name among a 
whole series of capitalists, etc. . . . But whilst on the one hand 
the Jews are thus beyond dispute the leaders of the plutocracy 
of Europe . . . another section of the same race form the 
leaders of that revolutionary propaganda which is making way 
against that very capitalist class represented by their own 
fellow- Jews. Jews — more than any other men — have held 
forth against those who make their living not by producing 
value, but by trading on the differences of value; they at this 
moment are acting as the leaders in the revolutionary move- 

1 The Great Republic, by Sir Lepel Henry Griffin (1884), pp. 3-4. 



242 WORLD REVOLUTION 

ment which I have endeavoured to trace. Surely we have here a 
very strange phenomenon. . . . Those, therefore, who are 
accustomed to look upon all Jews as essentially practical and 
conservative, as certain, too, to enlist on the side of the prevail- 
ing social system, will be obliged to reconsider their conclusions. 
But the whole subject of the bad and good effects of Jewish 
influence on European social conditions is worthy of a more 
thorough investigation than can be undertaken here. Enough, 
that in the period we are approaching not the slightest influence 
on the side of revolution will be that of the Jew. 

That Jews belonging to both the revolutionary camps 
of Anarchy and of State Socialism were now co-operating 
in their efforts to overthrow the existing social system is 
seen from another passage in Mr. Hyndman's works, in 
which he describes a visit he paid to Karl Marx when the 
anarchist Hartmann was present. 1 That these two Jews 
both desired the downfall of the country which so foolishly 
offered them hospitality is further evident. 

Already twelve years earlier Marx had formed his plan 
of attack on Great Britain. In the Instructions issued by 
the General Council of the Internationale signed by 
Dupont, the acolyte of Marx, and despatched from London 
to Geneva in 1870, this axiom had been laid down: 
" Although revolutionary initiative must come from 
France, England alone can serve as a lever for a serious 
economic revolution." 

But this revolution was not to be brought about by the 
English workers, for the instructions go on to say: 

The General Council being placed in the happy position of 
having its hand on the great lever of the proletarian revolution, 
what folly to let it fall into purely English hands! 2 

This policy is then summed up in the following message 
by Marx: 

1. England is the only country in which a real Socialist 
revolution can be made. 

2. The English people cannot make this revolution. 

3. Foreigners must make it for them. 

4. The foreign members, therefore, must retain their seats 
at the London board. 

1 Hyndman's Reminiscences, p. 280. 
2 Deschamps, ii. 569. 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 243 

5. The point to strike at first is Ireland, and in Ireland they 
are ready to begin their work. 1 

" These English," Dupont added, " have all the mate- 
rials needed for a Socialistic revolution; what they lack 
are the generalizing spirit and the revolutionary fire." 

The author of the Secret History, whence we glean this 
gem, observes: 

What then? Karl Marx, Eugene Dupont, and George 
Eccarius, must clutch their power and keep their seats. They 
say so boldly. . . . These gentlemen were aware that a revolu- 
tionary march is not an easy thing in London, where the people 
are so individual in their tastes and tempers, and so stupidly 
attached to independent judgment, private property, and 
personal rights. But they were not without some hope. In 
turning to the West they saw a star descending to the Irish Sea. 
That star they followed with beseeching eyes : it trembled over 
Cork. " The only point where we can strike the great blow 
against official England is on Irish soil. In Ireland the move- 
ment is made a hundred times more easy for us by the two prime 
facts that the social question is that of rent, and that the people 
are more revolutionary and exasperated than in England. ..." 

A final phrase completed M. Dupont 's account: 
The position of the Internationale in face of the Irish ques- 
tion is very clear. Our first care is to push the revolution in 
England. To this end we must strike the first blow in Ireland. 2 

Through what agency was this blow to be struck? 
What was the organization on which the World Revolu- 
tionists depended for the execution of their plan? Again 
a secret society. From the French Revolution onwards it 
was always by secret societies that Continental agitators 
had carried on their work in Ireland. The Society of 
United Irishmen founded in 1791 was, as we have already 
seen, directly modelled on the method of Weishaupt, the 
Secret Societies under Fenton Lalor in 1848 had followed 
the same tradition, and now the Fenians, who had come 
into being between 1858 and 1870, were organizing them- 
selves on the same model. This was the society on which 
Marx and his council depended for support. The state- 
ment will of course be indignantly denied by the conspiracy 
of history which seeks to prove Fenianism, like Nihilism, 

1 The Secret History of the International, by Onslow Yorke, p 156 
2 Ibid. p. 159. 



244 WORLD REVOLUTION 

to be indigenous to the soil in which it flourished, a move- 
ment wholly unconnected with the central organization of 
World Revolution. But as it happens, the connection 
between Marx and the revolutionaries of Ireland is not a 
matter of surmise but of fact, for it rests not only on the 
above-quoted message dated January 1, 1870, but receives 
further confirmation from an entry in the records of the 
Internationale containing a message of sympathy 
addressed to the Fenians in December 1869 by the Gen- 
eral Council of the Internationale in London. 1 It was 
evidently, therefore, on the strength of the manner in 
which this overture was received that Marx a few weeks 
later despatched his confident declaration to Geneva. 

But the Internationale had failed to bring about the 
desired revolution in Ireland, and it was not until the date 
we have now reached, 1882 — after Illuminism had been 
reconstructed — that Fenianism, which in about 1872 had 
become a secret society, known as the " Irish Republican 
Brotherhood," embarked on its course of dynamite out- 
rages in Great Britain and America. The patriotic 
Catholic prelate, Monsignor Dillon, in a course of lectures 
held in Dublin, thus eloquently warned Ireland of the 
danger to itself and to all Christian countries from the 
conspiracy that was seeking to destroy every national and 
religious ideal : , < ..■ 

It is not an expression of Irish discontent finding a vent in 
dynamite which England has most to fear from anarchy. . . . 
The dark directory of Socialism is powerful, wise, and deter- 
mined. It laughs at Ireland and her wrongs. It hates and 
ever will hate the Irish people for their fidelity to the Catholic 
faith. But it seizes upon those subjects which Irish discontent 
in America affords to make them teach the millions everywhere 
the power of dynamite, and the knife, and the revolver, against 
the comparatively few who hold property. This is the real 
secret of dynamite outrages in England, in Russia, and all the 
world over; and I fear we are but upon the threshold of a social 
convulsion which will try every nation where the wiles of the 
secret societies have obtained, through the hate of senseless 
Christian sectaries, the power for Atheism to dominate over the 
rising generation and deprive it of Christian faith, and the fear 
and the love of God. 

1 Guillaume, Documents de I' Internationale, i. 251. 







THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 245 

Monsignor Dillon goes on to describe the manner in 
which the occult powers enlist their dupes, and shows the 
terrible fate of 

the Irishman who first begins to listen to _ the seducer of the 
secret society, and afterwards becomes himself a seducer, a 
leader, perhaps a traitor, in the deadly conspiracy to rum 
religion, to destroy God. His career is often this : At first a hope- 
ful young, ambitious student of his country's history, he begins 
to feel indignation at her wrongs, and wishes to light them. In 
a fatal hour he meets the tempter. He is sworn into the terrible 
sect He gets a command, an importance in the organization 
He is youthful, but the season of life wherein to make an honest 
livelihood passes rapidly in intrigue. He knows the course into 
which he has fallen is bad, is injurious to religion, but he hopes 
to repent . . But having lived his best days to conspire he 
now must conspire to live, and inured to bad habits, he is at last 
ready for anything. . . . 

By degrees he herds with the worst class of Atheistic 
and Socialist plotters. 

And this is strange, for while the Irish conspirator may be as 
able to plot mischief as the worst of the miscreants with whom 
he associates in France, he differs from them in this, that m the 
secret of his soul he never loses his faith. They know this well, 
and they watch him, use him, but never fully trust him. Many 
a broken Irish heart the children of the Revolution m Pans have 
made already. Many a one of those Irish victims wishes again 
for the days of his boyish innocence and blessed faith. . . . God 
grant that ... the race of wretched men who have so often in 
the past ensnared generous-hearted Catholic Irishmen in Ireland, 
in Great Britain, in America, and elsewhere, may end for ever. 
From such false agents, and from the machinations of all enemies 
to Irish Faith, we may well pray, God save Ireland. 

The New World, like the Old, was soon to experience 
the effects of the great conspiracy. In 1886 the Anarchists 
of America, led by Johann Most, gave evidence of their 
presence by a dynamite explosion in the Haymarket of 
Chicago. But it was not until 1891 that the series of 
Anarchic outrages described as the periode tragique began 
in earnest. Was it again a mere coincidence that in July 
1889 an International Socialist Congress in Paris decided 
that May 1, which was the day on which Weishaupt founded 
the Illuminati, should be chosen for an annual Inter- 
national Labour demonstration, and that it was with a 



j 



246 WORLD REVOLUTION 

demonstration organized by the Anarchists on May 1, 
1891, that the periode tragique began? 

For three years a gang led by Ravachol continued to 
terrorize the population of Paris with bombs and dynamite 
outrages, a series of crimes that ended with the stabbing of 
President Carnot at Lyons on June 25, 1894. 

Later on followed the attacks on crowned heads — 
the murder of the Empress of Austria in 1898, of King 
Humbert of Italy in 1900, of King Carlos and the Crown 
Prince of Portugal in 1908, of the King of Greece in 1914. 

Professor Hunter, who in his book Violence and the 
Labour Movement deals in an interesting manner with the 
psychology of the men who perpetrated these deeds, asks 
our sympathy with them on the score of their devotion to 
a cause. Quoting Emma Goldman's explanation that they 
were impelled " not by the teachings of anarchism but by 
the tremendous pressure of conditions making life unbear- 
able to their sensitive natures," Professor Hunter goes on 
to ask how it is possible for society to take the lives of these 
" tormented souls," driven to desperation by the sorrow 
and suffering of the world. 

Now to begin with, a great number of the perpetrators 
of Anarchist outrages cannot be placed in the category of 
tormented souls, but belong simply to the class of common 
criminals who, if they had lived a couple of centuries 
earlier, would have found a congenial career as footpads, 
cut-throats, or banditti. One group of German Anarchists 
in New York who lived by arson — that is to say by 
insuring their premises for amounts far in excess of their 
real value and then burning them down with kerosene — 
ended by murdering and robbing an old woman in Jersey 
City ; Ravachol, the leader of the Paris Terrorist gang, was 
finally convicted and executed for strangling a mendicant 
hermit; whilst the motor bandits of 1912 led by Bonnot, 
whom we are also asked to regard as rebels against 
" society," seem to the lay mind indistinguishable from the 
highwaymen of romance. 

But in the case of those tormented souls " which it 
would perhaps be nearer the truth to describe as " unbal- 
anced brains " who appear to be victims of an idea rather 



THE COURSE OF ANARCHY 247 

than of mere criminal instincts, the point overlooked — 
and we cannot help thinking wilfully overlooked — by 
Professor Hunter is that they were not solitary fanatics 
acting on irresistible individual impulse but the agents of a 
conspiracy. The art of the secret societies has always been 
to seek out physical and mental degenerates and work upon 
their minds until they have roused them to the requisite 
degree of revolutionary fervour. Bound at the same time 
by terrible oaths, the wretched tools selected for each 
crime set forth on their tasks knowing full well there could 
be no turning back for fear of the vengeance of their 
instigators. Even as recently as the attack on M. Clemen- 
ceau the weak-minded youth Cottin admitted that he was 
a member of a secret society and his connection with the 
Anarchist movement was clearly established by the papers 
found at his lodgings. 

It is not then these poor creatures who should be led to 
the scaffold or caged in prison cells until they lapse into 
imbecility ; the lunatic asylum should be reserved for such 
as these, the scaffold for the superiors of the secret societies 
who direct their strokes. But hardly less guilty are the 
sane and responsible Socialists like Professor Hunter who, 
by their glorification of crime, impel other weak minds to 
follow the same course. 



Whilst Anarchy was thus making itself felt throughout 
Europe, Socialism pursued a more leisurely course. As in 
all revolutionary movements violence had won the day, 
and the decline in popular favour that had begun with the 
anti-Marxian demonstrations of 1872 continued to the end 
of Marx's life. Although by 1881 he had spent thirty-two 
years in London, he was " practically unknown to the 
British public " * and counted no following amongst 
British workmen. Moreover, at this date he contrived to 
fall foul of one of his staunchest supporters amongst the 
intelligentzia, Mr. Hyndman, whom he accused of pilfering 
his works without acknowledgment. " His attacks," 
writes Mr. Hyndman, " of the most vindictive character, 

1 Hyndman's Reminiscences, p. 272. 



248 WORLD REVOLUTION 

were " " followed up by Engels with even more of vitriolic 
fervour for years." 1 , 

Of the various British Socialist organizations inaugu- 
rated during this period I do not propose to treat in detail. 
Neither the Social Democratic Federation, founded in 1883 
by Mr. Hyndman, nor " The Fabian Society," formed by 
Mr. Sidney Webb in the same year, nor the " Christian 
Socialists " under the Rev. Stuart Headlam, originated 
any new doctrines, but merely elaborated the ideas of their 
Continental inspirers. Many members of these societies 
were probably not Socialists at all but merely honest 
social reformers, whilst the less sincere — " drawing-room 
Socialists " living in luxury and tilting against the social 
system to which they owed their mode of existence — took 
up Socialism as a novel form of excitement and carried 
little weight, for their inflammatory speeches met with 
scant appreciation even in the poorest quarters of London. 
That they succeeded in obtaining a certain following 
amongst malcontents — mainly of their own class — is 
undeniable, but it was not they who supplied the driving 
force behind the great revolutionary machine which thirty- 
four years later was to deliver the supreme attack dreamt 
of J^y Weishaupt for the destruction of civilization. 

1 Hyndman's Reminiscences, p. 283. 



CHAPTER IX 

SYNDICALISM 

Quarrels amongst Socialists — The old Guilds — Revolutionary Syndical- 
ism — Outcome of Anarchy — The General Strike — Georges Sorel 
— Syndicalism versus Socialism — Guild Socialism — " New 
Australia." 

Whilst Socialism in England was thus pursuing a labori- 
ous course and still remained almost exclusively confined to 
drawing-rooms, the same doctrines met with continued and 
active hostility from the French peasants. 

Mr. Hyndman in his Reminiscences describes M. 
Clemenceau as expressing his opinion that Socialism could 
never make way in France in his day. 

Looking only at the towns you may think otherwise, though 
even there I consider the progress of Socialism is overrated. 
But the towns do not govern France. The overwhelming 
majority of French voters are country voters. France means 
rural France, and the peasantry of France will never be Social- 
ists. . . . Always property, ownership, possession, work, thrift, 
acquisition, individual gain. Socialism can never take root in 
such a soil as this. North or South it is just the same. Preach 
nationalization of the land in a French village, and you would 
barely escape with your life, if the peasants understood what 
you meant. 1 

It is strange how frankly Socialists at times admit 
that, for all their talk of democracy, their plans for the 
people's welfare are diametrically opposed to those of the 
people themselves. Mr. Hyndman goes on to relate that 
M. Paul Brousse, when consulted on Clemenceau's " pessi- 
mist opinion " of the French peasants, agreed that " to 
preach nationalization in the villages would be suicidal,' ' 

1 Reminiscences, p. 321. 
249 



250 WORLD REVOLUTION 

but seemed to think the peasants might be tricked into 
Socialism all the same. 

The word Socialism need never be used at all; but the ideas 
of natural and communal organization and administration would 
soon find their road into his mind. In this way the peasant's 
conception of the sanctity of private and the curse of public 
ownership would gradually be shaken, and he would be on 
the path to practical Socialism before he knew what he was 
going on. 1 

Mr. Hyndman remarks that he thought this idea quite 
admirable. 

But while the Socialists were making plans for " edu- 
cating the people up " to their own lofty ideals the Social- 
ist camp in France was itself divided into at least three 
warring factions — the Guesdists, the Broussistes (or 
Possibilistes), and the Blanquistes — which continued " to 
excommunicate each other." 2 In fact, as Mr. Hyndman 
goes on to inform us, the conflict became at times so bitter 
that the Guesdists and the Broussistes " could not meet 
in one hall without the certainty of bloodshed, or at any 
rate of severe contusions, following. A spirit of fraternity 
so marked by brotherly hatred had about it something of 
the ludicrous." 

When therefore an International Socialist Congress 
took place " to bring about the unity of the workers of the 
world " it was found necessary to assemble in " two 
separate halls purposely chosen at some distance from one 
another to avoid the possible consequences of fraternal 
greetings." 3 

The two points on which these opposing factions dif- 
fered the most violently were the necessity for the class war 
and the domination of German Social Democracy. On the 
first question the Broussistes held more moderate views, 
believing in the possibility of immediate reforms whilst 
preparing the way for Socialism by evolutionary methods; 
the Guesdists, however, as consistent Marxists, adopted 
for their fundamental principle "the doctrine of the class 
struggle, a doctrine," says Laskine, " imported from 

1 Reminiscences, p. 326. 

* Mermeix, Le Syndicalisme contre le Socialisme, p. 90. 

• Reminiscences, p. 441. 



SYNDICALISM 251 

Germany and profoundly foreign to the spirit of French 
Socialists." 1 

In ranging himself under the banner of Marx, Jules 
Guesde had executed a complete volte-face; at the time 
of the Socialist revolt against the domination of Marx 
after the Commune, Guesde in a letter to the Bulletin de la 
Federation jurassienne, published on April 15, 1873, had 
denounced " the Marxist proconsuls " and " the infamous 
role of the founding of power by Marx and the General 
Council " (of the Internationale), 2 but after a five years' 
sojourn in Switzerland — whither he had fled to escape 
imprisonment — Guesde returned to France an enthusi- 
astic Marxist. 

The methods by which Guesde and other French 
Socialists were won over by the subtler German Jews to 
the Marxian camp is thus referred to in a significant 
sentence by Marx himself: 

" I need not tell you," Marx wrote to Sorge on November 5, 
1880, " that the secret strings by which the leaders from Guesde 
and Malan to Clemenceau have been set in motion must remain 
between ourselves. We must not speak about them." 3 

According to Laskine it was Hirsch — a German Jew 
— who had brought about the conversion of Guesde; at 
any rate from 1876 onwards the Guesdists became simply 
the French branch of German Social Democracy. 

This policy naturally estranged them from the French 
workers to whom the principles of bureaucratic Com- 
munism had always been repellent. Still, as in 1862, it was 
to Proudhon rather than to Marx that the more revolu- 
tionary elements inclined, whilst the great mass of French 
workmen saw in peaceful corporative association the true 
path of progress. It was the junction of these various cur- 
rents that towards 1895 brought about a further develop- 
ment in the revolutionary movement — Syndicalism. 

" Syndicalism," Mr. Ramsay Macdonald observes, " is 
largely a revolt against Socialism." 4 That such a revolt 

1 Laskine, V Internationale et U pan-Germanisme, p. 218. 

8 Ibid. p. 122. 

8 Ibid. p. 167, quoting Briefe an Sorge, p. 170 Laskine points out 
that Marx was mistaken in thinking that Clemenceau had gone over to 
the Marxist camp. 

* Ramsay Macdonald, Syndicalism (1910), p. 6. 



252 WORLD REVOLUTION 

should have taken place is hardly surprising. For over a 
hundred years the working-men of Europe had seen the 
middle and upper class men who constituted themselves 
their champions living in luxury — sleeping in the gilded 
beds of the Tuileries in 1794, housed in safety and comfort 
whilst the people perished on the barricades of 1848, enjoy- 
ing pleasant trips to Switzerland as delegates of the Inter- 
nationale, drawing continual subscriptions from the pock- 
ets of the workers in support of " congresses " or " leagues" 
or associations devised to benefit Labour — and now the 
time had come to ask: " What have we gained from all our 
sacrifices? What have these men done in return for the 
confidence we placed in them? " 

Not unnaturally, therefore, the theory of Syndicalism, 
consisting in the immediate control of industry by the 
workers themselves, seemed greatly preferable to the 
tedious and doubtful method of electing Socialist deputies 
to represent them in Parliament. Moreover, in the Syndi- 
calist ideas entertained by many of the French workmen 
there was nothing essentially revolutionary; their con- 
ception of reorganized industry approached more to the 
old idea of " guilds " and " corporations " than to the 
aggressive combines advocated by revolutionary Syndi- 
calists. They thought regretfully of the days of the Old 
Regime before the introduction of cut-throat competition 
when men worked peacefully at their trades, bound 
together by ties of comradeship under patrons who showed 
some concern for their welfare. Wherever he belonged 
" the compagnon was almost certain, by virtue of his 
corporative privilege, to find employment. The regulations 
provided that he should not find competitors amongst his 
comrades. The knowledge of his trade, recognized after 
the tests through which he had passed, constituted a 
capital for him of which the revenues were almost certain. 
And if this compagnon wanted to make a tour of France he 
found help and relief. Provided that he justified his claim 
as member of a corporation, he was welcomed and a place 
found for him. Defective and imperfect like all human 
things, the economic organization of the Old Regime was 
nevertheless beneficent, and how much preferable to the 



SYNDICALISM 253 

want of organization into which the regime of liberty had 
brusquely precipitated the working-men after the Revolu- 
tion." x * 

The suppression of the " corporations " by the law of 
1791 — confirmed by further laws under the Terror, and in 
the Code of Napoleon I. — had dealt the death-blow to the 
guild system, and when at last Napoleon III. in 1864 
removed the ban on trade unions, and the workers once 
more saw their chance of coalescing in defence of their 
common interests, the German Social Democrats of the 
first Internationale had turned the whole movement to the 
advantage of Communism — a system inherently repug- 
nant to the French workers. As far as they were concerned 
the Syndicalist movement was thus in its origins an 
attempt to get back to the freer ideas of friendly corpora- 
tions, just as in England the co-operative system inaugu- 
rated by the Rochdale Pioneers took an ever firmer hold 
on the minds of working-men. 

It was in order to meet these demands that, after the 
death of the Internationale, a general Union des Chambres 
Syndicales was formed under the leadership of Barbaret in 
1873, a wholly pacific organization which aimed at indus- 
trial harmony, and in 1876 a general congress of French 
workmen met in Paris, at which seventy unions and twenty- 
eight workmen's clubs from thirty-nine towns, with a 
membership stated to number a million workers, were 
represented by more than 800 delegates. " At the opening 
of the Congress it was expressly insisted on that not 
principles of social politics but the purely economical and 
practical interests of the working-men would engage the 
meetings," 2 and real improvements in the industrial 
system formed the subject of discussion. 

But as in the case of the Internationale the World 
Revolutionists succeeded in obtaining control over the 
movement; Broussistes, Guesdists, but above all Anar- 
chists ended by invading its ranks and blocking the path 
of peaceful progress. 

It is no figure of speech to say that Syndicalism is 

1 Mermeix (G. Terrail), Le Syndicalisme contre le Socialisme, pp. 62, 63. 
2 Zacher, Die Rothe Internationale. 



254 WORLD REVOLUTION 

simply a further development of the creed of Anarchy, for 
it rests on the same basis — negation of the State. Its 
earliest exponents were avowedly Anarchists; in America 
the terms were in fact synonymous. Moreover, it was 
Proudhon, the " Father of Anarchy," who had first formu- 
lated the whole theory of Syndicalism: " According to my 
idea, railways, a mine, a manufactory, a ship, etc., are to 
the workers whom they occupy what the hive is to the 
bees, that is at the same time their instrument and their 
dwelling, their country, their territory, their property." 
For this reason Proudhon opposed " the exploitation of the 
railways whether by companies of Capitalists or by the 
State." x 

Syndicalism is, therefore, government by trade unions, 
and must inevitably lead to anarchy. For not only are the 
workers to run industries but the whole country "On their 
own," and with no State to act as umpire it is obvious 
that chaos must result. The miners might raise the price 
of coal, the bakers the price of bread, and the rest of the 
community would have no means of redress, for in the 
conflict that would ensue between the different groups of 
workers the key industries alone could exercise any real 
authority. For the power of each industry would be in 
exact ratio to its ability to hold up the country, and since 
society cannot get on for a day without bread, coal, or 
transport, the miners, the railway-men, and the food 
purveyors would have an immense advantage over the 
workers engaged in such trades as boot-making, tailoring, 
or upholstery, who might strike in vain against extortion. 
Women-workers would of course have no voice at all. 

It is not, however, the system of Syndicalism but the 
method by which it is to be brought about that constitutes 
its principal claim to be ranged in the category, of anarchy. 
This method is the General Strike. 

Now, as Mermeix has pointed out, there are three kinds 
of General Strike: (1) the Corporative General Strike of 
the workers, (2) the Parliamentary General Strike of the 
Socialists, and (3) the Revolutionary General Strike of the 
Syndicalist leaders. Let us deal with these one by one. 

1 Proudhon, La Revolution au X VI lie siecle, p. 249. 



SYNDICALISM 255 

(1) The Corporative General Strike as conceived by 
the workers was not originally a measure of violence. 
Strikes throughout the early history of the Labour Move- 
ment had been the workers' only method of obtaining 
redress from exploitation, and no one but a Robespierre or 
a Lenin would deny the worker's right to lay down his tools 
if the conditions of his labour appear to him unjust. 

The Corporative General Strike was simply a develop- 
ment of this time-honoured method of expressing discon- 
tent which, carried out on a larger scale, would enable 
wokers in all industries to bring an effective support to 
the demands of their oppressed comrades. As Mermeix 
points out, the working-men's conception of the way in 
which the plan would work was very naive : 

Some day one would stay at home ; one would not go to the 
workshop. The bourgeois who fattens on the sweat of the people 
would waste away because the people would cease to sweat, it 
would be " a strike of folded arms " ; one would not go down 
into the street in tumultuous crowds, one would not expose one- 
self to the brutalities of the police and the guns of the soldiery. 
One would walk out in a family party, to lunch on the fortifica- 
tion, in the woods of Vincennes, in the Bois de Boulogne or 
even further in the smiling suburbs where the exploiters have 
their country houses. Would not this method be much better 
than that of the Socialist politicians who first of all advised one 
to vote for them, their electoral success being the first stage on 
the way to final victory, and who, once elected, would think only 
of their re-election? The general strike would be the revolution 
carried out as a huge joke. One would divert oneself with the 
expressions of the employers growing day by day more dis- 
consolate. One would watch them grow pale, yellow, distorted, 
and their rage would be powerless against the brave proletarians 
who would simply make use of their right to idleness — the right 
of Man, a natural and sacred right which the bourgeois has so 
long selfishly enjoyed alone. When it had had enough of it 
the class of leeches would ask to capitulate. The proletariat 
would dictate its conditions: " Give me back what you have 
stolen from me, that is to say, give me back everything and we 
will become good friends again. I will go back into your work- 
shop to work not as one exploited for your profit, but to work 
as a free social producer." And the bourgeoisie could not do 
otherwise than subscribe to this treaty. 1 

That in reality the worker would grow pale, yellow 
1 Mermeix, Le Socialisme contre le Syndicalisme, pp. 135, 135. 



256 WORLD REVOLUTION 

would in fact be dead before the employer reached the ends 
of his resources, did not enter into the reckonings of the 
" brave proletarians," nor does it still today when the plan 
of the general strike is placed before them. 

(2) The Parliamentary General Strike, as approved by 
certain Socialists, aims at quite a different denoument; it 
is not to end in improved relations between the workers 
and employers or in an entente between the workers and 
the Government, but in the overthrow of the political 
party which holds the reins of power in favour of the 
Socialists themselves. A general strike conducted on these 
lines would not " dispossess the Socialist party of the 
command which it has arrogated to itself over the working- 
classes"; on the contrary it would confirm this command, 
and leave to it the role it has chosen of " business man to 
the proletariat." * 

Even Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, arch-opponent of the 
revolutionary general strike, admits the expediency of the 
political variety. " The general strike," he observes, " can 
be declared for two purposes. It can be used to secure 
some specific demand — say an extension of the franchise, 
the resignation of the Government, or the defeat of a war 
party. ... As a last resort, as a coup de grdce, it may be 
justifiable, and need not be unsuccessful." 2 

In order, therefore, to place Mr. Ramsay Macdonald 
and his friends at the helm of the State, to overthrow a 
Government that retains an insular prejudice against 
foreign invasion, and to paralyse national defence, it may 
be necessary to bring upon the country the immense 
suffering caused by a general strike, which, when carried 
out by Syndicalists, as Mr. Macdonald himself remarks, 
" hits the poor people heaviest, the middle-classes next, 
and the rich least of all." 3 

For revolutionary Socialists today, as in 1793, " tours 
les moyens sont bons." 

(3) But the Revolutionary General Strike, the form of 
general strike advocated by the Syndicalists and that now 
forms the programme of extremist trade union leaders, 

1 Mermeix, Le Socialisme contre le Syndicalisme, p. 142. 

2 J. Ramsay Macdonald, Syndicalism, p. 61. 3 Ibid. p. 62. 



SYNDICALISM 257 

aims neither at a reorganization of industry nor at a change 
of government in the political sense, but at the complete 
destruction of constitutional government by violence of the 
most frightful kind. It is here that we come back to the 
connection between Anarchy and Syndicalism; not only 
is the Syndicalist system a development of the creed of 
Anarchy, but its method for inaugurating it comprises the 
exact programme of the earlier Anarchists. 

Now it will be remembered that the idea of " useful 
larceny " had first been suggested by Weishaupt, a prin- 
ciple applauded by Brissot and put into practice by Marat 
when he urged the populace to pillage the shops. Babeuf , 
though a Communist, had carried on the same tradition in 
his plan of the " Great Day of the People," when the 
people were to rise as one man and lay violent hands upon 
property. From Babeuf onwards the scheme had been 
logically abandoned by Communists — since Communism 
aims not at mob rule but at bureaucracy — but continued 
along the line of Anarchy. Proudhon in his revival of 
Brissot's axiom " Property is theft," Bakunin in his glori- 
fication of robbery, and finally Kropotkine in his theory of 
" The Great Expropriation," all followed out the same 
idea, namely, that of a " Great Day " of revolution when 
the maddened multitude, driven by want and desperation, 
should rise against all wealth and property in one over- 
powering onslaught. Had not Bakunin and Netchaieff 
indicated this design in an illuminating sentence: " We 
must increase and heighten the evils and sorrows so as 
to wear out the patience of the people and drive them 
to insurrection en masse" By this means only, the 
social revolution could be accomplished and civilization, 
obnoxious civilization, wiped out at one stroke. 

But how were the people to be driven to this pitch of 
exasperation? Obviously by hunger. The want of bread 
alone, as the Orleanistes of 1789 had clearly perceived, can 
be depended on to produce popular insurrection, and in the 
eighteenth century famine had been easy enough to engi- 
neer by buying up supplies, waylaying waggons of corn, or 
throwing sacks of flour into the river. But a hundred years 
later improved means of transport and the complicated 



258 WORLD REVOLUTION 

modern system of food distribution had made such primi- 
tive methods impracticable. How, then, were want and 
hunger to be brought about ? Only by some gigantic coup 
that would paralyze the whole country and lead to the 
Great Expropriation dreamt of by the Anarchists. Syndi- 
calism now provided the weapon by which this was to be 
accomplished — the General Strike. 

Let us examine the programme of the revolutionary 
General Strike as resumed by Mermeix from the declara- 
tions of its advocates, and we shall see how exactly the 
" Grand Soir " of the Syndicalists corresponds with the 
Anarchists' idea of the Great Day of Revolution. 

First* of all, a series of isolated strikes is to take place 
in various industries by way of partially paralysing Capital 
and of unsettling Labour. 

Then at a given signal the workers, roused to violence 
by want and idleness, are to invade the workshops, mines, 
factories, etc., and take possession of them. At this stage, 
of course, the Government will be obliged to call in the aid 
of the police and soldiery, and the fight will begin. The 
revolutionaries will cut the telegraph and telephone wires; 
railway lines will be torn up to prevent the transport of 
troops or provisions; at the same time it is hoped that a 
number of the soldiers will go over to the side of the revolu- 
tion. By this means the capital will be starved out, the 
markets will be empty, and the inhabitants rendered sav- 
age by hunger may be expected to turn on the Govern- 
ment — and also on the bourgeoisie. 

: -: Of course there is always the possibility that the popu- 
lation, instead of turning on the Government, will turn 
upon the revolutionaries, but " this last prospect does not 
disconcert the partisans of revolution by the General 
Strike. The Parisians will fight amongst themselves; well, 
then, things will go all the better. Everything that will make 
confusion worse would be an advantage." And in the end, 
if the revolutionaries fail to overthrow the Government, 
the havoc they will work will be irretrievable. Before 
evacuating the workshops the Syndicalists will resort to 
sabotage; all the instruments of labour will be destroyed. 



SYNDICALISM 259 

The railways will remain unusable; the ruin of the capital 
will be complete. 1 

What then? After that frankly the apostles of Syndi- 
calism promise nothing ; their conception ceases with this 
final climax — " a series of atrocious scenes, of burnings, 
of ruins, of murders, of terror," carried out by " tramps, 
poachers, marauders, with terror rising from below and 
ending in a fearful melee." 2 

One must read for oneself the work of M. Georges Sorel 
to realize that this idea, well characterized by Mermeix as 
" the dream of a neurasthenic negro king," 3 can seriously 
enter into the calculations of a man outside a lunatic 
asylum. But to M. Sorel the prospect offers nothing 
alarming ; on the contrary, whilst admitting that the Gen- 
eral Strike will be " a catastrophe of which the process 
baffles description," 4 the leading apostle of Syndicalism 
regards it as the goal towards which all agitation should 
tend. " Syndicalists ," he declares, " concentrate all Social- 
ism in the drama of the General Strike." 5 

It is, in fact, as a drama, as a spectacle, that M. Sorel 
looks upon the final cataclysm, or rather as a gigantic 
cock-fight of such sanguinariness and of such dimensions 
that one can die happily after witnessing it. For what is 
to happen afterwards — the lendemain de la revolution — 
one must take no thought ; it will be enough to have lived 
to see " a tidal wave passing over the old civilization." 

It will thus be seen, not as a matter of surmise but 
of fact, that the General Strike as now advocated by the 
extremist leaders is simply the prelude to the Great 
Expropriation. 6 

By allying the latter plan with the workers' idea of a 
corporative General Strike the Syndicalists have evolved 
the scheme of " The Day " which is to overthrow civiliza- 

1 Mermeix, pp. 153-156. 2 Ibid. p. 159. 3 Ibid. p. 232. 

4 Reflexions sur la violence, p. 202. 6 Ibid. p. 161. 

• See the pamphlet called The Social General Strike by the British 
Syndicalist Jack Tanner, which admits this design. "Expropriation," 
which is to be brought about by the General Strike, means " taking back 
what belongs to the working-class," and the author goes on to say: " The 
need for food and the necessaries of life would force the people to help 
themselves. Hunger forces even the most timid to take what they are 
entitled to." From the point of view of the people themselves it is appalling 
to imagine what this sytem of food distribution would lead to. 



260 WORLD REVOLUTION 

tion. Of course the workers themselves have no conception 
of the real design, and each time that a General Strike is 
attempted doubtless imagine it to be a brilliant inspiration 
on the part of their leaders in view of a sudden emergency. 
" The miners are striking for a higher wage. Let us stand 
by them! Happy thought — let all workers present a solid 
front to the oppression of Capitalism! One — two — 
three — all together — strike! " , 

." Thus playing on the simple camaraderie of the workers, 
and urging them to solidarity in the interests of Labour, 
the Syndicalists hope to drive them onwards into the melee 
which is to end in no amelioration of the workers' lot, 
but simply in the destruction of the existing social order. 
What is to avert the catastrophe? Only greater knowl- 
edge on the part of Labour. The first thing, then, is to 
dispel the illusion that the General Strike is a modern and 
progressive measure. The workers should be told not 
only its real purpose but its history ; they should be shown 
that, instead of being the outcome of any present emer- 
gency, it is an old scheme that has been going on for at 
least fifty years and has been turned down as impracticable 
by all intelligent groups of workers. Let us now follow the 
vicissitudes of the idea throughout the last' half-century. 
As a revolutionary method Mermeix suggests that the 
idea of the General Strike may be traced to the phrase of 
Mirabeau: " This people whose mere immobility would be 
formidable." 

Now Mirabeau, as we know, was an Illuminatus. Had 
then even the plan of the General Strike as the weapon 
wherewith " to deal the deathblow to civilization " entered 
into the " gigantic conception " of Weishaupt? In a vague 
sense this is possible, but in its details the General Strike 
is, as I have shown, essentially a measure adapted to 
modern conditions. 

The plan was first definitely proposed at the Congress 
of the Internationale in Brussels in 1868, when the decla- 
ration was made that " if production were arrested for 
a certain time the social body could not exist, and that it 
was only necessary for producers to cease to produce in 
order to make the personal and despotic enterprises of 



SYNDICALISM 261 

Government impossible." * From this date the idea of the 
General Strike was current, and in 1873 the Belgian section 
of the Internationale invited the other sections of the 
association to prepare for the attempt to bring it off, but 
the Congress of Geneva declared it to be at present 
impracticable. 

In 1884 the Government attempted to arrest class 
warfare by founding " Bourses du Travail," or Labour 
Exchanges, which should not only provide work but main- 
tain harmony between employers and employed. But the 
Bourses, like the Chambres Syndicales, soon became hot- 
beds of revolutionary intrigue, and in 1888 the plan of the 
General Strike was pressed with renewed vigour by the 
Anarchist carpenter Tortelier. 

After achieving some success in the faubourgs of Paris, 
Tortelier this same year came to London, where he 
preached his gospel before a Labour Congress. But " the 
apostle of the General Strike," with his thick-set figure, 
bull's neck, hoarse voice, and slovenly attire, whose aspect 
suggested that 'of a satellite of Marat, was not taken seri- 
ously by British working-men and met with scant success. 

In France, however, the cherished scheme of Tortelier 
found increasing favour. " The idea of the General 
Strike," says Mermeix, " charms the working masses 
because it is so simple." And in France there are always 
the anarchic elements who crave to /aire sauter le bazar. 
Thus at a congress of members of the Syndicates and of the 
Bourses held at Nantes in 1894 the policy of the General 
Strike was definitely adopted by 65 votes against 37. In 
the following year the formidable association known as 
the Confederation Generate du Travail was founded by the 
extremists with the General Strike as the principal plank 
in its platform. From this date, 1895, onwards a seven 
years' war was waged between the C.G.T. and the Bourses, 
until in 1902 the Bourses were finally extinguished and 
Syndicalism was left in triumphant possession of the field. 

Several attempts have already been made to bring 
about the revolutionary General Strike — in Spain in 
1874, in Belgium in 1902, in Sweden in 1909, in South 

1 Mermeix, p. 131. 



262 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Africa in 1911, in France in 1920, but so far the firmness of 
governments and the resistance of the community at large 
have averted the climax of the " Grand Soir " dreamt of by 
the Syndicalists, and the principal sufferers have been the 
strikers themselves. But this fact in no way deters the 
advocates of the General Strike from pursuing their pur- 
pose, which has now become the accepted policy of the 
C.G.T. At the same time other revolutionary measures 
have been adopted with a view to fretting away the foun- 
dations of Capital. Thus after 1889, when the dockers of 
Glasgow enforced their demands for higher pay by "going 
slow," the policy of Ca' Canny became a definite part of 
the Syndicalist programme. 1 In 1897 sabotage, which had 
hitherto been regarded as a measure of violence to be 
employed in the open warfare of revolution, was introduced 
as a method of passive resistance. Railwaymen had dis- 
covered that with a pennyworth of a certain ingredient 
engines could be put out of working, and the bright idea of 
applying this method to other instruments of labour 
met with an enthusiastic response at the Congress of 
Toulouse in 1897. Pouget, one of its most ardent advocates, 
describes this incident as " the baptism of sabotage." 2 

One variety of sabotage known as " Obstructionism," 
introduced in 1905, consists in following out regulations 
to the letter — " accomplishment of duty with excessive 
care and no less excessive slowness." Pouget gleefully 
describes the inconvenience to which railway travellers 
may be put by this plan. 3 For it should be remembered 
that the methods of Syndicalism are directed not merely 
against the Government or employers but against the 
whole community. It is therefore perfectly accurate to 
distinguish between Syndicalism and Socialism, because 
the policy of Syndicalism is avowedly anti-social and 
oligarchic, whilst Socialism at least professes concern for 
the welfare of the majority. - ■'«./» 

The plan of the General Strike further emphasized this 
division between the Socialists and Syndicalists. For 
although, as we have seen, Socialists are not 'unwilling to 

1 fimile Pouget, Le Sabotage, pp. 6-8. 
8 Ibid. p. 17. 3 Ibid. pp. 55-64. 



SYNDICALISM 263 

consider the idea of the parliamentary General Strike 
which will bring them into power, they have always con- 
tinued to prefer the ballot-box as a method of procedure. 
As to the revolutionary General Strike, this was opposed 
throughout even by the followers of Marx, represented in 
France by the Guesdists. " I only wish some one would 
explain to me," said Jules Guesde, " how breaking street 
lamps, disembowelling soldiers, and burning down fac- 
tories can constitute a means of transforming property. 
We ought to put an end to all this war of words calling 
itself revolutionary. No corporative action, however 
violent, partial strike or general strike, would be able to 
transform property." 1 

Thus although the Marxians were at one with the 
Syndicalists in wishing to bring about the grand catastro- 
phe, they differed only in the manner by which it was to be 
effected. " They (the Syndicalists) said: ' The catastrophe 
will be caused by the General Strike. It is the General 
Strike that will be the catastrophe.' This catastrophe is 
distinguished from that which is awaited by the Marxists, 
the Socialist politicians, in that it will not be brought 
about by chance, it will arise when the workmen wish it. 
Syndicalism disciplines the catastrophe which the Socialists 
await with the fatalism of marabouts. " 2 

But according to Georges Sorel the Marxians have 
entirely misinterpreted their master's meaning, which in 
reality excluded " any hypothesis constructed on future 
Utopias " ; in fact, Sorel represents Marx to have actually 
declared that ' ' whoever has a programme for the future is a 
reactionary." 3 

Now, of course, if Marx really said this the whole 
theory of Marxian Socialism is founded on a fallacy and is 
proved to be a system in which Marx himself never 
believed. But to do him justice we must recognize that 
there is some truth in Sorel's contention that Marx never 
pretended to have devised any definite system for " the 
organization of the proletariat," that he merely made use 

1 Paul Leroy Beaulieu, Le Collectivisme (1909), p. 650. 

8 Mermeix, p. 122. 

9 Reflexions sur la violence, pp. 185, 191. 



264 WORLD REVOLUTION 

of the " enormous mass " of ready-made material which he 
found in the British Museum for his great work on 
Capital, 1 and that it was his disciples who read into it ideas 
for the reconstruction of the social system. 

On these grounds Sorel is able to claim Marx as his 
ally, that is to say, as a pure destructionist — not as a 
Syndicalist, for nowhere in Marx's writings could one find 
any hint of the Syndicalist theory of industrial organiza- 
tion; but above all it is as the great promoter of the class 
war that Sorel finds in Marx his true affinity. To this one 
point the apostle of Syndicalism is ready to sacrifice all 
other considerations. " The scission of classes,' ' he 
declares, " is the basis of all Socialism " ; 2 the one thing to 
be avoided is social peace. 

Indeed, Sorel's one fear is that modern nations," stupe- 
fied with humanitarianism (abruties par Vhumanitair- 
isme) " 3 — the phrase might be taken straight from 
Nietzsche — may prevent the conflict. 4 To guard against 
this danger every effort must be made to keep up the class 
war, not only by inciting Labour to attack Capital, but by 
stiffening the resistance of Capital to the demands of 
Labour. " The more ardently Capitalistic the bourgeoisie, 
the more will the proletariat be filled with a war-like spirit 
confident in its revolutionary force, the more will the 
movement be assured." 5 

It is necessary, therefore, by violence " to force Capi- 
talism to occupy itself solely with its material role," so as 
" to give back to it the warlike qualities it once pos- 
sessed." 6 Employers of labour must be made to under- 
stand " that they have nothing to gain by works of social 
peace or by democracy." 7 "All then," Sorel concludes 
hopefully, " can be saved if by violence it (the proletariat) 
succeeds in consolidating class divisions and in restoring to 
the bourgeoisie something of its energy; that is the great 
aim towards which must be directed the thought of all 

1 Reflexions sur la violence, pp. 185, 191. 

* Ibid. p. 257. 8 Ibid. p. 110. 

4 See Sorel's whole chapter on "La Decadence bourgeoise et la violence," 
i.e. the disinclination of employers to fight labour. Ibid. pp. 91-121. 

5 Ibid. p. 105. « Ibid. p. 110. 
7 Ibid. p. 109. 



SYNDICALISM 265 

men who are not hypnotized by the events of the day but 
think of the conditions of the morrow." * 

Such, then, is the aim of Syndicalism as set forth by its 
chief exponent, Georges Sorel. At first sight the one merit 
it seems to possess is frankness. Hitherto revolutionary 
writers, to whichever faction they belonged, had always 
professed that their system would conduce in some degree 
to human happiness; even £he Anarchists appeared to 
derive enjoyment from the prospect of their lunatic 
dreams of the future. But Sorel promises nothing; 
" Utopias of easy happiness " he openly derides; even on 
the system of Syndicalism he has practically nothing to 
say — the only thing that matters is to keep up revolu- 
tionary ardour. Yet, after all, we find that Sorel is not 
much more honest than his predecessors, for whilst 
denouncing the visionary Socialists who lead the prole- 
tariat towards a mirage, Sorel goes on to admit that the 
General Strike, which, like Der Tag of the Germans, must 
ever be held before the eyes of the people, is in reality a 
myth. It will probably never come off, but just as the early 
Christians maintained their religious ardour by looking 
forward to the second advent, so the people must be 
taught to centre all their hopes on the coming cataclysm. 
Thus the idea of the General Strike will serve the purpose 
of continually unsettling industry and fretting away the 
foundations of Capital. 

To the normal mind the theory of Sorel as set forth in 
the foregoing pages must of course appear unbelievable; 
the incredulous should therefore read his book for them- 
selves in order to be convinced that such views can be 
seriously put forward. Is Sorel, however, sincere, or is he 
secretly an agent of reaction? The hypothesis is not 
beyond the bounds of possibility. At any rate if the author 
of Reflexions sur la violence had been put up by the Gov- 
ernment to discredit the whole Socialist movement by 
working it out to a reductio ad absurdum, he could not have 
stated his case more ably or have offered sounder argu- 
ments for the defence of the existing order against the 
encroachments of so-called democracy. " Experience 

1 Reflexions sur la violence, p. 120. 



266 WORLD REVOLUTION 

shows," says Sorel, " that in all countries where democracy 
can develop its nature freely the most scandalous corrup- 
tion is displayed without anyone considering it of use to 
conceal its rascalities," l and after a scathing indictment 
of democratic government in America and elsewhere he 
ends with the words: "Democracy is the land of plenty 
dreamt of by unscrupulous financiers." 2 

But it is for the parliamentary Socialists that Sorel 
reserves his bitterest scorn. The sole object of these people 
— " Intellectuals who have embraced the profession of 
thinking for the proletariat" 3 — is to bring themselves 
into power. In reasoning on social conflicts " they see in 
the combatants only instruments. The proletariat is their 
army, which they love with the love a colonial adminis- 
trator may feel for the bands which enable him to subject 
a great many negroes to his caprices; they concern them- 
selves with leading it on because they are in a hurry to win 
quickly the great battles which are to deliver up the State 
to them; they keep up the ardour of their men, as the 
ardour of the troops of mercenaries has always been kept up 
by exhortations to coming pillage, by appeals to hatred, 
and also by small favours which already permit them to 
distribute a few posts." 4 But in reality it will not be the 
proletariat who will share the spoils, for the prospect on 
which the leaders' eyes are fixed is " the day when they 
will have the public treasure at their disposal; they are 
dazzled by the immense reserve of riches which will be 
delivered then to pillage; what f eastings, what cocottes, 
what satisfactions to vanity! " 6 Then, then, at last " our 
official Socialists can reasonably hope to achieve the goal 
of their dreams and sleep in gorgeous mansions." 6 After 
that " it would be very naive to suppose that people 
profiting by demagogic dictatorship would easily give up 
their advantages." 7 

As to the " dictatorship of the proletariat " advocated 
by the Socialists but " on which they do not much care 
to give explanations," 8 Sorel declares that this would be 

1 Reflexions sur la violence, p. 320. : Ibid. p. 321. 

3 Ibid. p. 186. * Ibid. p. 233. 

• Ibid. p. 112. ■ Ibid. p. 101. 

* Ibid. p. 236. 8 Ibid. p. 234. 



SYNDICALISM 267 

a return to the Old Regime, a plan for feudalizing Capital, 
and he quotes Bernstein in saying that it would end simply 
in the dictatorship of club orators and litterateurs. 1 Who, 
he asks, is to profit by such a government ? Certainly not 
the country, which would be ruined, " but what does the 
future of the country matter as long as the new regime 
provides a good time for a few professors who imagine they 
invented Socialism and a jew Dreyfusard financiers? " 2 

In the opinion, therefore, of the great Syndicalist, 
Jewish finance is largely interested in the triumph of State 
Socialism. 

The inconsistency of Jaures and other French Social- 
ists on the question of Dreyfus is shown up in Sorel's book 
by a parallel drawn from the first French Revolution, of 
which he ruthlessly shatters the legends and destroys the 
prestige of " the great revolutionary days," 3 and he asks 
why Danton, of whom Jaures in his great history of the 
Revolution had made a hero, but whose conduct during 
the sad days of September " was not very worthy of 
admiration," 4 should be defended on the score of acting 
in the interests of national defence, when Jaures himself 
took part against the anti-Semites who also believed they 
were acting in the interests of national defence in the 
matter of the Affaire Dreyfus. The revolutionaries were 
represented by Jaures as " sacrificing immediate human 
tenderness and pity " for the success of the cause, but then 
Sorel inquires: " Why have written so much on the 
inhumanity of the tormentors of Dreyfus? They too 
sacrificed ' immediate human tenderness ' to what seemed 
to them the salvation of the country." 5 

Not only Jaures and Clemenceau in France but the 
Socialists of England become in turn the butt of Sorel's 
pleasantries : 

Sidney Webb enjoys a very exaggerated reputation tor 
competence: he had the merit of compiling uninteresting 
dossiers, and the patience to compose one of the most indigesti- 
ble compilations on the history of Trade Unionism, but he is 
one of the most borne minds which could only dazzle men little 

" x Reflexions sur la violence, pp. 234, 235. 2 Ibid. p. 102. 

• Ibid. pp. 124-130, 238, 239. * Ibid. p. 147., 

■ Ibid. p. 146. " ~ 



268 WORLD REVOLUTION 

accustomed to think. The people who introduced his glory 
into France did not understand a word of Socialism, and if he is 
really, as his translator asserts, in the first rank of contemporary 
authors of economic history, the intellectual standard of these 
historians must be very low. 

And Sorel adds that, in the opinion of Tarde, Sidney Webb 
was simply " a blotter of paper " (un barbouilleur de 
papier)? 

In order to appreciate the antagonism between the 
opposing camps of Syndicalism and State Socialism it is 
only necessary to read Sorel' s book in conjunction with 
Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's little work on Syndicalism, 
where " the fantastic programme of revolution produced 
by the Syndicalist " is admirably shown up. " If," the 
British advocate of Socialism concludes, " the grand pro- 
gramme of Syndicalism is a mere delusion, its immediate 
action is mischievous. Sabotage, destruction of industrial 
capital, perpetual strikes injure the workers far more than 
any other class, and rouse in society reactionary passions 
and prejudices which defeat the work of every agency 
making for the emancipation of labour. They put labour 
in the wrong. The Syndicalist might be an agent provoca- 
teur of the Capitalist, he certainly is his tool." 2 

But in this feud between Syndicalism and Socialism — 
the mere continuation of the old conflict between Anarchy 
and Communism — it would be folly to see any security 
for society. The rival revolutionary camps may be — and 
are — bitterly antagonistic in their aims, but both will 
stand together for the overthrow of the existing social 
order, and only when the country has been reduced to 
chaos by revolution, or to bankruptcy and ruin by Social- 
ist administration, will the leaders of the opposing forces 
take each other by the throat in a life-and-death struggle. 

Although, as we have seen in the preceding pages, the 
root idea of Syndicalism — organization and control of 
industry by independent groups of workers — has some- 
what been lost to sight by Syndicalist writers, who have 
concentrated their attention more on the revolution than 

1 Reflexions sur la violence, p. 163. 
J. Ramsav MacDonald. Syndicalism, p. 167. 



SYNDICALISM 269 

on its morrow, a more constructive phase of the same 
theory has been inaugurated in recent years by the move- 
ment known as Guild Socialism. 

Now Guild Socialism is nothing new. To any one 
familiar with Socialist literature the task of embarking on 
the gospel of Guild Socialists, as set forth in the writings 
of Mr. G. D. H. Cole, must appear something like sitting 
down to read through a Dictionary of Famous Quotations. 
But this is an experience to which the patient student of 
Socialism must resign himself, for since by the middle of 
the last century everything that could be said on the 
subject had been said already, further exponents of the 
creed can only dish up the cold remains left by their 
predecessors. The process is, however, frequently very 
successful ; nothing is easier than to gain a reputation as a 
brilliant Socialist writer by simply rearranging the same 
theories, the same phrases, and the same catchwords in a 
different manner to tempt the jaded palate. Yet never 
have the chefs of Socialism produced a galantine to com- 
pare with that of Mr. G. D. H. Cole! Here a little bit of 
Louis Blanc, there a scrap from Vidal, but, above all, solid 
slabs of Marx and Sorel. And all this concealed by a 
cunning glaze of modernity! 

In reality Guild Socialism is simply Syndicalism with 
the addition of a State. But the State is not to exercise 
authority, only to act as a municipal body, also as a banker 
to the workers, and occasionally as umpire in industrial 
disputes. National finance would be decided by " a Joint 
Committee representing equally the State and the Guild 
Congress. The State would own the means of production 
as trustee for the community : the Guilds would manage 
them, also as trustees for the community, and would pay 
to the State a single tax or rent." 1 

The assurance of Guild. Socialists that the Guilds would 
always honourably act up to their part as trustees is based 
on " confidence in man," although we note that a large 
portion of the human race, the present employing class, is 
to be regarded with the blackest suspicion. Apparently 
the fact of becoming a " Guildsman " miraculously does 
1 National Guilds, an Appeal to Trade Unionists, p. 13. 



270 WORLD REVOLUTION 

away with all such characteristics as greed and self-inter- 
est. All this is pure Buchez, and we have only to turn back 
to page 109 of this book to see Guilds where " every man is 
a master " in operation, whilst Louis Blanc's " associa- 
tions of working-men," financed by the State, demonstrate 
the precise system of Guild Socialism — and incidentally 
its failure in the past. 

Unhappily it is not in the spirit of Buchez or even of 
the fanatic Louis Blanc that Guild Socialists set about 
their task. For all its professions of spirituality and love 
for humanity, Guild Socialism is avowedly revolutionary. 
" To Revolutionary Trade Unionism the Guild idea 
looks," 1 its aim is " the realization of Industrial Union- 
ism, the building up of the whole body of Labour into one 
fighting force." 2 Borrowing Marx's phraseology on the 
doctrine of " wage-slavery," it sets out to promote class 
hatred of the most virulent description and advocates 
strikes to overthrow the Capitalist system. In its denun- 
ciations of State Socialism the influence of Sorel is clearly 
detected. 

The only point, then, in which Guild Socialism shows 
itself superior to Syndicalism is that, instead of concen- 
trating solely on destruction and the General Strike, it 
makes some plans for the " morrow of the revolution." 

In its conception of guilds of busy workers co-operating 
in a spirit of fraternity to make a success of their trade, 
it takes us back to the original idea of Syndicalism — 
Proudhon's old simile of the hive where we see in imagina- 
tion the swarms of happy bees flitting through the summer 
sunshine laden with honey for the comb, full of joy in their 
labours. 

Yet all that is to be said in favour of the industrial 
system that Guild Socialism advocates can equally be said 
of Co-operation. Co-operative industry exemplified by 
such schemes as profit-sharing, co-partnership, etc., is 
simply Guild Socialism without its economic fallacies — 
and also without revolution. This is precisely why co-oper- 
ation finds in Socialists and Syndicalists alike its bitterest 
opponents. 

1 The Guild Idea, p. 14. » National Guilds, p. 19. 



SYNDICALISM 271 

But there is also a further difference between Co-opera- 
tion and Guild Socialism. Co-operation is an honest move- 
ment, for it has always been willing to put its theories to 
the test by inaugurating industries on a co-operative basis. 
Sometimes these experiments have failed, sometimes they 
have triumphantly succeeded. Co-operation has not been 
proved a failure. 

But it will be noticed that neither Syndicalists nor 
Guild Socialists ever propose to start industries on the lines 
they advocate, but always to " expropriate " by violence 
those already in existence and hand them over to the 
workers. In this respect their record compares unfavour- 
ably with that of Socialists. The earlier Socialists, whose 
sincerity we cannot doubt, did attempt to carry out their 
schemes by means of Communists' Settlements ; Syndical- 
ism ventures on no such experiments. This is the more 
significant in that the reason given by Socialists for their 
failures in the past does not apply to Syndicalism. For 
if one is tactless enough to question Socialists on these 
abortive efforts one is inevitably met with the stock reply : 
" Oh, of course Socialism cannot exist in isolated com- 
munities; in order to test its efficacy it must be adopted 
by the State." Now although we know that it was not 
through outside opposition or competition but from inter- 
nal disintegration that these settlements went to pieces, it 
is nevertheless obvious that State Socialism can only be 
practised by a Socialist State. This condition, however, is 
quite unnecessary to the existence of Syndicalism, since the 
system it advocates is to consist of autonomous groups of 
workers independent of State control. There is therefore 
no reason why these should not exist under the present 
regime. What is there to prevent a syndicate of miners 
from taking over a mine, or of factory workers buying a 
factory, and running it on Syndicalist lines? The huge 
funds of the Trade Unions would surely be better spent in 
an outlay of this kind than in strikes that deplete their 
exchequer to no purpose. For not only would a successful 
experiment on these lines satisfy the aspirations of all the 
workers who took part in it, but would proclaim to the 
world the efficacy of the Syndicalist theory. Henceforth 



272 WORLD REVOLUTION! 

only Syndicalist industries would attract workers, and 
employers who continued to maintain the old system of 
wage payment would find themselves denuded of employ- 
ees. Thus without any violence, without the shedding of a 
drop of blood, the whole industrial system could be 
revolutionized. 

Why is this not done? Simply because the leaders of 
Syndicalism know that it could not succeed. They are well 
aware that an industry which adopted the principle of 
control by all the workers would come to grief as surely as 
a ship that adopted the plan of navigation by all the crew. 
In a word, they do not believe in the theories they teach. 

One experiment founded to a certain extent on Syndi- 
calism may, however, be quoted. This was the settlement 
inaugurated by William Lane in Paraguay at the end of 
the last century. Lane, an English journalist who had 
settled in Australia, appears to have been a perfectly 
honest man who had become deeply imbued with the doc- 
trines both of Karl Marx and of Syndicalism. Hence he 
believed that " the factory-hand was the rightful owner of 
the factory, that the sheep-shearer was entitled to the full 
profits of the shearing industry, that the legal owners of all 
forms of property were robbing the manual workers of 
their dues." 1 Lane, therefore, entered whole-heartedly 
into the great Syndicalist strikes which at this date of 1890 
were paralysing the trade of the country. But perceiving 
the futility of this method of warfare — which had the 
effect of reducing the high wages of Australian workers to 
the level of forty-five years earlier — Lane decided to 
found a workers' paradise in another land. Accordingly at 
the end of 1892 he set sail with 250 faithful followers for 
Paraguay, where he started a colony under the name of 
" the New Australia " a few miles from Asuncion. 

The subsequent adventures of the settlers have been 

vividly described by Mr. Stewart Grahame in a narrative 

which is much more amusing than Three Men in a Boat, 

and has the additional merit of being true. It should be 

1 Where Socialism failed, by G. Stewart Grahame (John Murray, 
1913), p. 5. In view of the above quotation it would perhaps have been 
more accurate to name the book Where Syndicalism failed. But the generic 
term of Socialism is frequently used to include Syndicalism. 



SYNDICALISM 273 

read by every one interested in Socialistic ventures, for 
only a brief resume can be given here. 

At first everything promised well; the colonists entered 
into possession of 350,000 acres of the very finest land in 
Paraguay, with pasturage sufficient to keep at least 70,000 
head of cattle, and since all were filled with " communal 
ardour," and also with the warmest confidence in their 
leader, there seemed no reason why a flourishing settle- 
ment should not result. But precisely the same experi- 
ences befell William Lane as had befallen Etienne Cabet 
forty-four years earlier. The colonists before long took 
turns in quarrelling amongst themselves and in accusing 
Lane of tyrannizing over them. " The man who worked 
arduously for eight hours in the vegetable garden envied 
the more fortunate fellow who spent his day riding about 
the pastures herding cattle. The cowboy, on the other 
hand, considered that the schoolmaster had a considerably 
easier job, and he was perhaps moved to compare his lot 
with that of the colonist whose principal duty appeared 
to be to blow the dinner horn." 

Inevitably " bitter charges of favouritism were levelled 
at the head of Lane and at the heads of the foremen in 
charge of every industry." " We have surrendered all civil 
rights and become mere cogs in the wheel," wrote one of 
the colonists who had come to New Australia to find joy 
in " work by all for all." " In fact a man is practically a 
slave. Lane does the thinking and the colonists do the 
work. Result, barbarism." 

At the end of fourteen months Lane found nimself 
obliged to expel a number of malcontents ; in the following 
year (1894) no less than a third of the colony seceded of 
their own accord. " We came," said one, " to found Utopia 
and we have succeeded in creating a Hell upon Earth." 
But on the arrival at this juncture of 190 new-comers, who 
had been attracted to the New Australia by delusive 
reports, Lane was himself deposed, and started off at the 
head of a few followers to found another settlement, which 
he named Cosme. 

For a few years the two colonies struggled on in misery, 
but finally in 1899 Lane abandoned his experiment at 



274 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Cosme and returned to Australia. By dint of employing 
native labour on the hated wage system they had set out 
to destroy, the Cosmians partly succeeded in restoring 
their shattered fortunes; but before long the Socialist 
principle was recognized as a failure and abandoned by 
both settlements in favour of Individualism. 

From this moment the energy of the colonists revived. 
" In an incredibly short space of time houses shot up sur- 
rounded by well-tilled kitchen gardens. . . . Very soon 
the grass lands were once more dotted with cattle . . ." ; 
in a word, New Australia became " an average community 
of sane, sober, hard-working, self-respecting farmers, living 
at peace with one another and taking for their motto: 
1 What we have we hold ! 

The experiment of New Australia offers an interesting 
demonstration of Proudhon's theory of the hive and the 
bees when carried out to its ultimate conclusion. For in 
New Australia, as in all other communal settlements, the 
principal difficulties encountered were the lack of public 
spirit and the inclination to " slack." " There is absolutely 
no regard for common property," one member of the colony 
wrote to the Pall Mall Gazette. Moreover, " it was freely 
alleged by almost every colonist against some other that 
the latter was working less vigorously for the benefit of 
' all ' than he would have done in his own interest." Mr. 
Stewart Grahame goes on to show us how this lack of 
energy would be overcome in a Socialist State, and by a 
curious coincidence he illustrates the fate of " won't 
works " under Socialist administration by the same simile 
as Proudhon in a description of the massacre of the drones, 
quoted from Maeterlinck's La Vie de Vabeille; 

> One morning the long-expected word of command goes 
through the hive, and the peaceful workers turn into judges and 
executioners. . . . Each one is assailed by three or four envoys 
of justice. . . . Many will reach the door and escape into 
space . . . but towards evening, impelled by hunger and cold, 
they return in crowds to the entrance of the hive to beg for 
shelter. But there they encounter another pitiless guard. The 
next morning, before setting forth on their journey, the workers 
will clear the threshold, strewn with the corpses of the useless 
giants. 



SYNDICALISM 275 

On closer inspection the industrial system of the hive 
is thus seen to be less peaceful than it had been represented 
by the Father of Syndicalism — Proudhon. Yet all the 
more it demonstrates the manner in which alone Socialist 
or Syndicalist administration can be carried out on a large 
scale. 

In isolated settlements of the kind, idlers or objectors 
can be banished, but once the system has been made 
universal the refusal to do the share of work allotted to 
one can only be punishable by death. The text adopted by 
militant Socialists as their battle-cry, " If a man will not 
work neither shall he eat!" must be literally carried out by 
a Socialist State, and the proletarian disciples of Ca' 
Canny, no less than the " idle rich," as also those workers 
for whom no employment can be found, will find that the 
law of the hive can be even more ferocious than the hated 
government of " Capitalism." 

Mr. Stewart Grahame has well said that " few, even 
amongst Socialists, realize the ferocity of Socialism." They 
imagine that " that classic pattern of Socialist administra- 
tion, the Reign of Terror," was an accident that need not 
recur if the experiment of Socialism is repeated. But we 
have only to examine the writings of Socialists to recognize 
that the Reign of Terror was simply Socialism carried out 
to its logical conclusion. Thus we find even a Socialist 
of such reputed moderation as Mr. H. M. Hyndman writ- 
ing these words: 

The whole noble array of barristers, solicitors, accountants, 
surveyors, agents, and about ninety-nine hundredths of the 
present distributors would be wholly useless in a properly 
organized society. They live upon the existing bourgeois system 
. . . They will disappear with the huckster arrangements on 
which they thrive. 1 

Since there is at present no way of making human 
beings " disappear " it is obvious that they must be killed 
off, for, as Robespierre perceived, they cannot all be 
absorbed by " work of essential utility," and can therefore 
only be left to die of starvation. So all Socialist roads lead 
back to the old system of depopulation, and it is question- 

1 H. M. Hyndman, The Historical Basis of Socialism (1883), p. 461. 



276 WORLD REVOLUTION 

able whether the guillotine was not the humaner method. 

Syndicalism at any rate does not conceal its intentions 
in this matter. The massacre of the drones — and of those 
whom overcrowding of the hive forces to become drones — 
forms an essential part of the programme that Mermeix 
has well described as " a Neronic dream." 

In the exultations of Georges Sorel over the coming 
death struggle between Capital and Labour, we seem to 
hear a Roman Emperor rejoicing in anticipation over the 
collision between two racing chariots that is to strew the 
arena with the mangled remains of men and horses and 
drench its sand in blood. 

Syndicalism as formulated by George Sorel is the plan 

of the World Revolution stripped of its illusory wrappings 

and revealed in all its naked deformity. It is avowedly 

anti-patriotic, anti-religious, anti-democratic; it is, in the 

words of one of its own advocates, Pouget, " the negation 

of the system of majorities," and its sole aim is rule by 

force and violence. Far more than Socialism, it is the 

direct continuation of the programme of the Illuminati. 

Can we not see Weishaupt smiling in his grave as we read 

the words of Sorel: " It is impossible not to see that a sort 

of irresistible wave will pass over the old civilization "? 

(Since writing the above chapter I have been informed on good authority 
that M. Georges Sorel has definitely gone over to the Royalists. I wonder 
how many youthful Syndicalists are told of this incident in the life of 
their prophet. — Author's Note.) 



CHAPTER X 

THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 

The Great War — Role of British Socialists — Role of German Social 
Democrats — The Russian Revolution — Bolshevism — Role of 
the Jews — The Protocols of Nilus — German Organisation. , t 

When the Great War broke out in 1914 it was on Inter- 
national Socialism that Germany counted to break the 
resistance of her enemies. 

Everywhere the ground had been carefully prepared. 
In England, from the founding of the First International 
onwards, German intrigue had never ceased to play a 
leading part in the succeeding Socialist organizations, each 
of which in turn had been diverted from its original course 
in the direction of pan-German interests. 

Although the influence of Marx amongst the British 
working-men was practically nil during his lifetime, the 
Marxian tradition had been carried on by his colleague 
Engels and his British middle-class disciples who formed 
the Socialist associations in this country. 

Thus the Second Internationale, founded in 1882, 
became Germanized by 1893, and remained so until the 
outbreak of war, when it was suspended and did not recon- 
struct itself until the Geneva Congress of 1920. The 
Fabian Society, inaugurated in 1883, fell almost imme- 
diately under the control of Mr. G. Bernard Shaw who 
has made no secret of his international sympathies. In the 
same year the Social Democratic Federation was founded 
by Mr. H. M. Hyndman, with Justice as its organ, and in 
the following year of 1884 produced an offshoot in the 
Socialist League founded by William Morris with the 
co-operation of Mr. Belfort Bax, an Austrian semi- 

277 



278 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Anarchist named Andrea Scheu, several English Anar- 
chists, and Dr. Aveling, the " husband " of Marx's 
daughter, as editor of its organ The Commonweal. 

This ceased to exist in 1892. The original S.D.F. mean- 
while continued its course, but in 1911 changed its name to 
the British Socialist party. 

The alien influence in all these associations is thus 
plainly visible, but it was not sufficient to content Fried- 
rich Engels, who therefore set to work on another enter- 
prise, the " Independent Labour Party," which, with the 
collaboration of Mr. Keir Hardie, he afterwards boasted 
that he helped to create. Engels then instructed Dr. 
Aveling, who had formed a "free union " with Marx's 
daughter, 1 to join the Executive Committee of the I.L.P., 
whilst Eleanor herself " was told off to work for the Gas 
Workers' and General Labourers' Union." ► ,','.,,,. 

Engels now imagined that, with the aid of the Independent 
Labour Party, he would obliterate the Social Democratic Feder- 
ation and the Fabians, as a punishment for not showing sufficient 
subservience to German leadership. He evidently believed that 
he was eminently successful in these efforts. On July 20, 1889, 
Engels wrote to Sorge: " I think that we are going to make great 
progress here." Then he goes on to explain that as the Anglo- 
Saxons are slow and dull of comprehension, it was quite natural 
that English workmen should be "bossed" (gebosst) by Germans. 

In a subsequent letter Engels boasts that the gas workers 
of London " were led by Tussy," the diminutive name of Marx's 
youngest daughter (Eleanor). Finally, in 1892, Engels repeats 
triumphantly : 

We are making great progress here in England. Affairs 
advance splendidly. Next year there will be seen marching 
behind Germany, not only Austria and France, but also 
England. 2 , 

These hopes found their fulfilment on the declaration 
of war in 1914. What part did the Socialists play? The 
true meaning of Internationalism was then revealed. 
Although the war on the part of Germany was one of pure 
aggression, and on the part of England one of urgent 
national defence, the whole German Social Democratic Party 

1 How admirably Marx was fitted to direct the affairs of the human 
race is shown by the way he managed his own family. Eleanor Marx, 
her " husband," Dr. Aveling, and her sister all committed suicide. 

* Adolphe Smith, The Pan-German Internationale, p. 6. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 279 

in a body went over to the German war -party, 1 whilst all the 
Socialist organizations in this country — the Independent 
Labour Party, the British Socialist Party, and the Socialist 
Labour Party— opposed England's participation in the war. 2 

Not content with this Pacifist attitude before the out- 
break of hostilities, certain Socialists — notably the mem- 
bers of the I.L.P. — continued, after the war had begun, 
to give active encouragement to the enemy. Mr. Ramsay 
Macdonald, who had published a violent indictment of the 
British Government on August 13, 1914, was mentioned on 
several occasions with the warmest approbation in the 
German press. At a congress of the I.L.P. in Norwich in 
April 1915, a resolution was passed by a huge majority 
opposing recruiting. Worse still, industrial troubles were 
stirred up amongst the workers, delaying the supply of war 
materials to the troops, so that the Referee declared that 
11 German Socialists and their English allies were respon- 
sible for the death of thousands of Englishmen on the 
battle-front." 3 

It is only just to add that the question of the war 
brought about a split in the British Socialist Party, and 
though the name was retained by the anti-war party — a 
party largely composed from 1916 onwards of Russian- 
Jews and foreign Anarchists, with The Call for their organ 
— a group of British Socialists, under the leadership of Mr. 
Hyndman, stood out for national defence, and in 1916 
reorganized themselves under the name of the " National 
Socialist Party." In 1920 this society resumed the original 
name of the Social Democratic Federation, whilst at the 
same date the British Socialist Party, now affiliated to the 
Third (Moscow) Internationale, became the British Com- 
munist Party and changed the name of its organ from The 
Call to The Communist. The fact then remains that at the 
outbreak of war British Socialism was represented by no 
national and patriotic party. The work of Germany had 
been well and truly done. 

1 On this point see Laskine's admirable pamphlet, Les Socialistes du 
Kaiser, la fin d'un mensonge (Floury, 1915). 

2 The Two Internationals, by R. Palme Dutt (Labour Research Depart- 
ment, 34 Eccleston Square), 1920, p. 3. 

3 Laskine, V Internationale et le pan-Germanisme, pp. 377-382. 



280 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Unless these preliminaries are clearly recognized, the 
attitude of the Socialists must appear only as the most 
extraordinary paradox. Why should the so-called cham- 
pions of democracy have accorded their sympathy to 
Imperial Germany, the most monarchic and the most 
autocratic country in the world, rather than to Republican 
France, the home of the revolutionary tradition ? It is true 
that the Government of Germany under Wilhelm II. was 
probably the best in Europe from the point of view of the 
working-classes, but this was precisely because it repudi- 
ated the Socialistic theory of the dictatorship of the pro- 
letariat, and owed its success to the fact that it treated the 
people like children, cared for them like children, punished 
them like children, and never allowed them to dictate. 

The pro-German sympathies of British Socialists are 
therefore incomprehensible unless we realize that all their 
ideas had been instilled into their minds by German 
agents. " I am anti-French, but I am none the less anti- 
English," Marx, their prophet, had declared, 1 and the 
" anti- Allies " attitude of " International " Socialists in 
this country was the natural result of these influences. 

In France German propaganda had been less successful. 
Although there were a few notorious pro-Germans in the 
Socialist and Radical camps the French Socialist party 
stood solidly for national defence. Even Jaures, whose 
illusions on Germany had excited suspicions of complicity 
with the enemy, warned his countrymen that they must 
" beware of the Illuminati, who seek to organize the pro- 
letariat on a non-national basis." 2 Anti-patriotism is a 
sentiment not easily aroused in France, and inspires little 
admiration there when professed by foreigners. In this 
connection it is amusing to observe the attitude of Georges 
Sorel — Syndicalist, and therefore International, as he 
might profess to be — towards our British pacifists. 

" Arbitration," he remarks, " always gives results disastrous 
to England; but these good people (the English Liberals) prefer 

1 Briefwechsel zwischen Marx und Engels, iv. 335, date of September 
12, 1870. 

2 Quoted in speech of M. Brunet, Socialist deputy for Charleroi, 
August 2, 1920. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 281 

to pay or even to compromise the future of their country rather 
than affront the horrors of war. . . . Many Englishmen think 
that by humiliating their country they will become more sym- 
pathiques — this is not clearly proved." l 

But it was by pacificism that the great conspiracy 
gained its end in Russia. This is not the place to recount 
the story of the Russian Revolution, which is still too fresh 
in the minds of the public to need repeating; all that con- 
cerns us here is to trace the course of the World Revolution 
throughout the movement and to controvert the purblind 
declarations of certain leading politicians in this country, 
who persisted in regarding the Russian upheaval as some- 
thing quite new in the history of the world. Thus in the 
House of Lords on February 10, 1920, Lord Curzon 
observed : 

When we look at Russia, who can regard that spectacle with- 
out consternation and dismay? — a country at this moment 
prey to a revolution of a character unprecedented in history. 
Because, although every one is always drawing analogies with 
what happened in France 140 or 150 (sic!) years ago there is 
no analogy whatever. Everybody knows that the circumstances 
of what is happening in Russia at the present time are wholly 
without parallel in the history of the world, and you can imagine 
how in what are called the inner circles of statecraft at every 
moment we are confronted with this appalling spectacle outside 
our door, upsetting us, perplexing our resolution, and con- 
founding our calculations at every turn. 

What wonder that our foreign policy is frequently at 
fault and that our statesmen find themselves perplexed 
and confounded at every turn if this is the extent of their 
historical knowledge? Not only is there an exact analogy 
between the revolutions of France and Russia, but as 
every one who has studied the latter movement knows, the 
Russian Revolution from November 1917 onwards was a 
direct continuation of the French. This was admitted by the 
Bolsheviks themselves, who repeatedly declared that the 
first French Revolution must be copied in every detail, and 
who from the outset took Marat and Robespierre as their 
models. 2 

1 Reflexions sur la violence, p. 89. 

2 Sir Paul Dukes informed me that at a meeting of the Bolsheviks 
he attended in Russia at the beginning of the Revolution, Marat was held 
up as the great example to be followed. In June 1919 an article in the 



282 WORLD REVOLUTION 

It has been objected that in two important points the 
Russian Revolution differs from the French, firstly, that 
whilst the French Revolution was National, the Russian 
was International; secondly, that the French Revolution 
was directed against the aristocracy, but the Russian 
Revolution aimed particularly at the destruction of the 
bourgeoisie. Both these statements are inaccurate. The 
French Revolution, like the Russian Revolution, con- 
tained both National and International elements. In its 
declaration " all men are brothers " the French Constitu- 
ent Assembly gave expression to the purest International- 
ism, and Clootz, the apostle of this doctrine, received as 
we have seen, the loudest acclamations from the Conven- 
tion. It was only when the Jacobins' declaration of world 
anarchy met with opposition from foreign countries and 
also ran counter to the innate patriotism of the French 
people that the Convention found itself forced into an 
attitude of Nationalism it had never intended to assume, 
and under the domination of Robespierre, the greatest 
opponent of Internationalism, Clootz and the " parti de 
l'6tranger " were condemned to death. In Russia, on the 
other hand, the Revolution did not bear at the outset an 
entirely International character: amongst the Social 
Revolutionaries who brought about the rising of March 
1917 were several national groups; the Mensheviks like- 
wise comprised a national party, led by Plechanov. It was 
not until the Bolsheviks seized the reins of power that the 
Revolution became frankly International, and this was 
facilitated by the fact that the Russian people were less 
patriotic than the French, and also that whilst the Jacobins 
of France could count on no support from abroad the 
Bolsheviks depended almost entirely on foreign co-opera- 
tion and founded all their hopes on the prospect of a world 
revolution. 

Daily Herald described the closing down by the Bolshevik authorities "of 
a play entitled The Death of Danton, for fear it might be offensive to the 
memory of Robespierre. A Russian who had been imprisoned under the 
Bolsheviks wrote to me after reading my French Revolution: "Your 
book . . . seems to be the diary of our own revolution, so thoroughly 
well have our apes learnt their roles . . . everybody in Russia knew by 
heart that bloody era, though many of the actors hardly knew how to sign 
their names! " 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 283 

In the matter of the class war the Bolsheviks of Russia 
pursued precisely the same course as the revolutionaries of 
France. In both countries the monarchy and aristocracy 
were the first to suffer ; in both the turn of the bourgeoisie 
came next. In the summer of 1793, as we have seen, war 
on the bourgeoisie was declared by the Convention, and the 
battle-cries of that period have been adopted verbatim by 
the Bolsheviks. Let us follow the same process, as carried 
out by Lenin, in his own words: 

What is the first stage? It is the transfer of power to the 
capitalist class (bourgeoisie). Up to the March revolution of 
1917 power in Russia was in the hands of one ancient class, 
namely the feudalist-aristocratic-landowning class headed by 
Nicholas Romanov. After that revolution power has been in 
the hands of a different, a new class, namely the capitalist class 
(the bourgeoisie). The shifting of power from one class to 
another is the first, the main, fundamental symptom of a revolu- 
tion, both in the strictly scientific and the practical political 
sense of the word. To this extent, the capitalist or bourgeois- 
democratic revolution in Russia is at an end. l 

In Russia as in France war on the bourgeoisie was only 
the second stage of the movement, and in both the com- 
plete subjection of the people formed the next point on the 
programme. 

The Bolshevik revolution was, from the very beginning, 
avowedly anti-democratic and in no sense the outcome of 
the Russian revolutionary movement. Until the end of the 
last century the subversive forces in Russia had been 
mainly anarchic, resulting from the doctrines of Bakunin 
and Kropotkine; but with the formation of the Russan 
Social Democratic Party a definite Marxian school was 
inaugurated and found further support in the Jewish Bund 
of Social Democrats. It was at a congress of the Russian 
Social Democratic Party in London in 1907 that the split 
took place, resulting in division into the two groups of 
Bolsheviks under Lenin and Mensheviks under Martoff, 
the former signifying the majority, the latter the minority, 
but since then the terms have come to denote the extreme 
and the less extreme party. 

At the outbreak of the March revolution of 1917 the 

1 The Soviets at Work, p. 8. 



\ 



284 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Bolsheviks were, however, completely in the minority 
amongst the various revolutionary groups — a fact frankly 
admitted by the Bolsheviks themselves 1 — and it was only 
by a course of systematic deception, and finally by force of 
arms, that the party which might be described in Bakunin's 
words, " the German- Jew Company," the " red bureau- 
cracy," succeeded in establishing its domination. Such 
popularity as it had achieved had been won by the old 
method of the conspiracy — promising one thing and 
doing precisely the opposite. Thus according to the word 
of command of the Secret Societies — " Constitution " — 
the Bolsheviks had clamoured for a Constituent Assembly, 
and their first act was to dissolve the assembly elected by 
universal suffrage; exploiting the war- weariness of the 
troops they had promised the people immediate peace, and 
having by these means created disaffection first in the 
navy, then in the First army, and finally throughout all the 
troops, they inaugurated a regime that could only exist on 
warfare and of which the whole policy is aggressive mili- 
tarism; they had promised the peasants the land they 
coveted, and then denied them the right to own the crops 
they grew on it} 

From the outset, however, the Bolsheviks had never 
succeeded in obtaining a following amongst the peasants, of 
which the revolutionary elements looked to the Social 
Revolutionaries for salvation, and it was on the workmen 
of the towns that they counted for support. But here 
again their promises proved delusive, and the workers who 
imagined that they were to run the industries in which they 
were engaged found themselves bitterly disillusioned. 
Great efforts have been made by the Bolsheviks to per- 
suade Syndicalists that their plans are identical, as we see 
in the overture made by Zinovieff in the name of the Third 
Internationale to the I.W.W. of America (date of January 
1920), where soothing assurances are given on the subject 

1 " At the beginning of the Revolution, the Socialist Revolutionary 
Party became by far the strongest in the whole political field. The peas- 
ants, soldiers, and even the masses of the workers voted for the Socialist 
Revolutionaries " (Trotzky, The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest- 
Litovsk (Allen and Unwin), p. 62). A report in the White Paper on Bolshev- 
ism asserts that 90 per cent of the population Were in favour of the mon- 
archy (date of October 14, 1918). 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 285 

of the State. " Our aim is the same as yours — a common- 
wealth without State, without Government, without 
classes, in which the workers shall administer the means of 
production and distribution for the common benefit of all." 
But the appeal goes on to explain that this cannot be done 
all at once, and the old process of the " withering away of 
the State," originating with Louis Blanc, is to take place. 
In the face of Lenin's views on control by the workers the 
hypocrisy of this protestation is, however, apparent. 

" Socialism," Lenin wrote in May 1918, " can only be 
reached by the development of State Capitalism, the careful 
organization of finance, control, and discipline amongst the 
workers. Without this there is no Socialism. ... To every 
deputation of workers which has come to me complaining that a 
factory was stopping work, I have said : ' If you desire the con- 
fiscation of your factory, the decree forms are ready, and I can 
sign a decree at once. . But tell me : can you take over the man- 
agement of the concern? Have you calculated what you can 
produce? Do you know the relations of your works with Russian 
and foreign markets? " Then it has appeared that they are in- 
experienced in these matters ; that there is nothing about them 
in the Bolshevik literature, nor in the Menshevik either. The 
workers who base their activities on State Socialism are the most 
successful." l 

Bolshevism then is not Syndicalism, it is State Social- 
ism, it is Marxism, it is Communism, in a word it is 
Babouvisme. 

It is therefore no figure of speech to describe it as the 
most reactionary school of thought now in existence, for it 
does not even carry on the traditions of 1848 or 1871, but 
goes right back to the century before last — the Bolshevik 
revolution of 1917 began where the French Revolution left 
off in 1797. Is it possible to conceive anything more retro- 
gressive ? 

Let us now follow the programme of Bolshevism as set 
forth by its own advocates in order to realize its exact 
resemblance to that of Babeuf. We shall find it most 
clearly propounded in the pamphlet of Bucharin, the right 
hand of Lenin, from which the following passages are 
taken : 

1 The Chief Task of our Times, by Vladimir Oulianoff (Lenin), published 
by the Workers' Socialist Federation, p. 12. 



286 WORLD REVOLUTION 

We already know that the root of the evil of all plundering 
wars, of oppression of the working-classes and of all the atrocities 
of capitalism, is that the wealth of the world has been enslaved 
by a few State-organized capitalist bands, who own all the 
wealth of the earth as their private property. . . . To deprive 
the rich of their power by depriving them of their wealth by 
force, that is the paramount duty of the working-class, of the 
Labour Party, the party of Communists. ... In a Communist 
order all the wealth belongs not to individuals or classes, but to 
society as a whole ; no one man is master over it. All are equal 
comrades. . . . The work is carried out jointly, according to a 
pre-arranged labour plan. A central bureau of statistics calcu- 
lates how much it is required to manufacture in a year: such 
and such a number of boots, trousers, sausages, blacking, wheat, 
cloth, and so on. It will also calculate that for this purpose such 
and such a number of men must work on the fields and in the 
sausage work respectively, and such and such a number in the 
large communal tailoring workshops, etc., and working-hands 
will be distributed accordingly. The whole of production is 
conducted on a strictly calculated and adjusted plan, on the 
basis of an exact estimate of all the machines, apparatus, all 
raw material, and all the labour power in the community. 1 

Compare this with Babeuf : " A simple affair of numbering 
things and people, a simple operation of calculations and 
combinations." 2 

All this, Bucharin goes on to inform us, " can be 
attained only by working to a single plan and by organizing 
the whole community into one vast labour commune." 3 

This process, which is to begin with the bourgeoisie, is 
to be carried out 

by means of introducing labour record books and labour service. 
Every one of the above-named class should receive a special 
book in which an account is kept of his work, that is to say of 
his compulsory service. Fixed entries in his book entitle him 
to buy or to receive certain food products, bread in the first 
place. ... If such an individual refuses to work there is no 
corresponding entry in his book. He goes to the store but is 
told, " There is nothing for you. Please to show an entry con- 
firming your work." 4 

This may be very pleasing to the proletarian who sees 
in imagination the " idle rich " being forced to shoulder 

1 N. Bucharin, The Programme of the World Revolution (Socialist 
Labour Press, Glasgow, 1920), pp. 16, 17. 

2 P. 63 of this book. 

* Programme of the World Revolution, p. 17. * Ibid. p. 55. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 287 

spade or pickaxe in order to secure a meal, but the prole- 
tarian smile fades away as the end of the page is reached 
and these ominous words appear: " Of course labour 
service for the rich should only be a transitory stage 
towards general labour service." 

If we turn to The Russian Code of Labour Laws (pub- 
lished by the People's Russian Information Bureau in 
1920) we shall find that " all citizens of the Russian Social- 
ist Federal Soviet Republic over 16 and under 50 years of 
age " — with certain exemptions in case of illness — " are 
subject to compulsory labour " of eight hours a day. 1 

In fact a great part of Lenin's writings are devoted to 
the problem of enforcing this system, to " the higher dis- 
cipline of the toilers," 2 " iron discipline during work with 
absolute submission to the will of one person," 3 for which 
purpose " a merciless dictatorship 4 must be exercised." 
Moreover, we find that after all " wage-slavery " still 
exists, for a whole section of the Russian Code relates to 
the " transfer and discharge of wage-earners." But in 
time the wages though not the slavery are to disappear, for 
Bucharin explains that sale and purchase will by degrees 
give way to barter: 

An " exchange " of goods must then begin between town and 
country, without the agency of money; municipal industrial 
organizations send out textile, iron, and other goods into the 
country, while the village district organizations send bread to 
the towns in exchange . . . when production and distribution 
are thoroughly organized money will play no part whatever, 
and as a matter of course no kind of money dues will be de- 
manded from any one. Money will have generally become 
unnecessary. Finance will become extinct. 5 

In order to attain this ideal condition of things the 
working-class must engage in a " bloody, painful, heroic 
struggle." 

We have only to turn back to the earlier pages of this 

book to see that this is identically and in every detail the 

plan of the Babouvistes; the Third International in its 

" New Communist Manifesto " in fact admits its direct 

« Pp. 6 and 16. * The Soviets at Work, p. 25. 

« Ibid, p. 35. ■ Ibid. p. 40. 

• Programme of the World Revolution, p. 69. 



288 WORLD REVOLUTION 

descent from Babeuf . How are we to explain the continu- 
ity of idea? Simply by the fact that both systems are 
founded on the same doctrines — those of Illuminism, and 
that the plan now at work in Russia has been handed down 
through the secret societies to the present day. 

The Bolshevik revolution has in fact followed out the 
code of Weishaupt in every point — the abolition of mon- 
archy, abolition of patriotism, abolition of private prop- 
erty and of inheritance, abolition of marriage and morality, 
and abolition of all religion. 

On the last two points queries will be raised. Has the 
Bolshevik Government officially abolished marriage? No; 
simply because it has not dared to do so, but its intentions 
in this respect are made quite clear in the pamphlet of 
Madame Kolontay, the friend of Lenin, Communism and 
the Family, 1 in which it is explained that the old form of 
" indissoluble marriage " is to give place to " the free and 
honest union of men and women who are lovers and com- 
rades " — that is to say simply to "free love." Does this 
imply then " the community of women " ? Much discus- 
sion has been devoted to this question, heated controver- 
sies have taken place as to whether the mandate of 
Ekaterinodar ordering the " socialization " of women was 
a part of the Bolshevik programme or merely the act of an 
individual commissar. Yet all the time the answer is quite 
simple. Bolshevism is avowedly Marxism; to follow the 
precepts of Marx in every detail is the supreme aim of the 
leaders. And the " official and open community of women " 
is laid down in Marx's Communist Manifesto. 2 If, there- 
fore, the Bolshevists have not established it in Russia it is 
because public opinion was evidently too strong for them. 
The mandate of Ekaterinodar, never intended for publi- 
cation in Western Europe, gave away the plan and pre- 
vented its execution. But Madame Kolontay' s pamphlet 
leaves no doubt as to the ultimate design. For " free love " 
must inevitably lead to the same conclusion — the removal 
of all protection from women. The hypocritical pretension 

1 Published by " The Workers' Socialist Federation," 152 Fleet Street. 

2 Manifesto of the Communist Party published in pamphlet form by 
the Socialist Labour Party, p. 19. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 289 

put forward by Marx and the Bolsheviks of wishing to 
abolish prostitution can deceive no one — Communism 
would simply replace voluntary prostitution by forcible 
rape. 

In this matter the Bolsheviks go much further than 
Babeuf, who does not touch on the community of women, 
although he is no less insistent on the necessity for the 
break-up of the family by taking away the children from 
their parents ; and his further stipulation that they should 
not be allowed to bear their father's name " unless he had 
distinguished himself by great virtues," certainly seems to 
indicate abolition of the present marriage system. But in 
their plan of the communal education of children the 
Bolsheviks have followed Babeuf to the letter. The 
English Communist, Mr. Bertrand Russell, has described 
the idea formulated by Madame Kolontay more or less 
vaguely — so as not to alarm Western mothers — as he 
saw it in operation during his stay in Russia, and it is 
curious to notice that Babeuf 's plan of teaching the chil- 
dren dancing has been carefully followed — an irony which 
even Mr. Russell could not fail to perceive, since the edu- 
cation of these " Eurythmic " dancers contrasted pathetic- 
ally with " the long hours of painful toil " to which they 
were " soon to be subject in the workshop or factory." l 
The exact resemblance between the Bolshevik system with 
that of Babeuf is/urther^ shown by this passage from Mr. 
Russell's book $>. ./...' -,.7>' 

It is necessary first to admit that children should be delivered 
up almost entirely to the State. Nominally, the mother still 
comes to see her child in these schools, but in actual fact, the 
drafting of children to the country must intervene, and the 
. whole temper of the authorities seemed to be directed towards 
breaking the link between mother and child. 2 -■>.,-. 

In the matter of religion the Bolsheviks seem to have 
been unable to carry out their programme entirely, for, 
although churches have been desecrated and destroyed, 
ikons torn down and spat upon, and countless priests 
murdered, religious worship has not been officially pro- 

/'V' 1 -Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (Allen 
and Unwin), 1920, p. 69. " ' '~ 

,; 2 Ibid. p. 66. Cf. with p.»59 of,' this book., 



290 WORLD REVOLUTION 

hibited as under the French Terror. But the intentions of 
the Soviet Government on this question admit of no mis- 
understanding. Turning again to Bucharin we find the 
following principles laid down : 

One of the agencies in achieving this object (dulling the 
minds of the people) was the belief in God and the Devil. A 
great number of people have grown accustomed to believe in all 
this, whilst if we analyse these ideas and try to understand the 
origin of religion and why it is so strongly supported by the 
bourgeoisie, it will become clear that the real significance of 
religion is that it is a poison which is still being instilled into the 
people. It will also become clear why the party of the Com- 
munists is a strong antagonist of religion. l 

Adopting the aphorism of Marx that " religion is opium 
to the people,' ' Bucharin goes on to show the mental 
degeneracy that results from any religious beliefs, and 
emphasizes his conclusions with these words in large black 
lettering: " Religion must be fought, if not by violence, at all 
events by argument." 2 

All religions, moreover, fall under the ban, for after 
describing the follies of fasting and penance, Bucharin 
adds: 

Equally foolish things are done by the religious Jew, the 
Moslem Turk, the Buddhist Chinese, in a word, by every one 
who believes in God. . . . Religion . . . not only leaves people 
in a state of barbarism, but helps to leave them in a state of 
slavery. 3 

In these words we seem to hear again the voice of 
Anarcharsis Clootz, " the personal enemy of Jesus Christ," 
uttering his declamations on " the nullity of all religions." 

What is all this indeed but Illuminism, of which the 
anti-religious fury had blazed out successively in Weis- 
haupt, Clootz, the chiefs of the Alta Vendita, in Proudhon^ 
and in Bakunin? Indeed the final aim of the Illuminati, 
the destruction of Christian civilization, has been frankly 
admitted by the Bolsheviks of Russia. " Wherever I went 
in Russia," the Rev. Courtier Forster said on his return 
from that unhappy country, " the Bolsheviks assured me 
that ' civilization was all wrong ' and must be done away 
with. An important follower of Lenin observed : ' We have 

1 Programme of the World Revolution, p. 73. 
* Ibid. p. 77. 3 Ibid. p. 76. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 291 

now been at work for two years and you see what we have 
already done, but it will take us twelve years to destroy 
the civilization of the world.' " And Mr. Lansbury, that 
obedient pupil of Lenin's, after his visit to Russia echoed 
the same sentiment in the columns of the Daily Herald: 
" We believe that man has been on the wrong road ever 
since the dawn of that thing we call civilization." : The 
very words employed by Robert Owen under the influence 
of Illuminism nearly 100 years earlier! 

Yet another witness to the persistence of this theory is 
Mr. H. G. Wells, whose visions of the future expounded in 
the concluding chapters of his Outlines of History and 
articles on Russia are simply a compound of Rousseau, 
Weishaupt, Clootz, and Babeuf. Thus at the end of the 
former work we find Mr. Wells anticipating a partial 
return to the " nomadic life " — the identical expression 
employed by Barruel in describing Weishaupt's theory, — 
whilst the same writer's views on Internationalism are 
pure Clootz. What else is the " World State " now being 
advocated by Mr. Wells in the Sunday Times but Clootz 's 
"Universal Republic," or his idea of union between all 
peoples regardless of nationality but Clootz's " solidarity 
of the human race " ? The following genealogy of an 
extraordinary remark by Mr. Wells on the subject of cities 
will show how curiously he has been impregnated with 
" illuminated " thought, and incidentally illustrates the 
method by which one can acquire the reputation of being 
an " advanced thinker " today: 

Barruel explained that the plan of Weishaupt had been 
to do away with fixed abodes so that man should return 
to the nomadic life, 2 and that this had been the influence 
at work behind the French Jacobins when they set out to 
destroy the manufacturing towns of France. 3 " Be free and 
equal," he quotes from the original writings of Weishaupt, 
" and you will be Cosmopolitans and citizens of the world. 
Know how to appreciate equality and liberty and you will 
not fear to see Rome, Vienna, Paris, London, Const anti- 

1 Daily Herald for June 30, 1920. 
Memoires sur le Jacobinistne, iii. 127, 130, and 198, quoting Original- 
scnriften, Part II., letter No. 10 to Cato. 
3 Ibid. pp. 141, 142, 178. 



292 WORLD REVOLUTION 

nople burning. . . ." 1 This plan, as we have seen, was 
put into execution during the Commune of 1871, and still 
forms an important part of the programme of World 
Revolution. 

In 1796 Babeuf , Illuminatus, expressed the hope that in 
time all the large towns of France would disappear, as it 
was in towns that wage slavery flourished and that Capi- 
talists were able to surround themselves with luxury and 
display. 2 

Seventy years later the Nihilists under the influence of 
German Illuminism declared: " We must burn down the 
towns. . . . What is the good of these towns? They only 
serve to engender servitude ! " 3 

And in 1920 Mr. H. G. Wells excuses the ruin of the 
towns of Russia under Bolshevism by saying : ' ' It was not 
Communism which built up these great impossible cities, 
but Capitalism." 4 

Now this is an argument too silly to have been invented 
by any one of Mr. Wells's intelligence, and we can only 
conclude that in putting it forward he is simply repeating 
a phrase that he has heard from his Russian friends, to 
whom the idea of the necessity for doing away with towns 
has descended direct from Weishaupt through the Secret 
Societies. 

It is obvious that ideas such as these in no way corre- 
spond to the desires of the " people " in any country. Even 
the peasants of Russia do not want a return to savagery, 
whilst to the proletariats of Western Europe nothing would 
be more abhorrent than the destruction of cities. They 
love the busy life of towns and all the amenities of civiliza- 
tion; they ask for better homes, a higher standard of living, 
for modern conveniences that will lighten the burden of 
the working-woman, for the devices of science, for cinemas 
and music to beguile their hours of leisure. They do not 
wish to solve the housing question by becoming nomads. 
The cure for social evils — slums, sweating, unemploy- 
ment, exploitation — is not less civilization but more. The 

1 Memoires sur le Jacobinisme, iii. 197. 

2 Buonarotti, Conspiration pour Vegalite dite de Babeuf, i. 221. 

3 Fribourg, Association Internationale des Travailleurs, p. 184. 

4 Sunday Express for Oct. 31, 1920. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 293 

" people " understand this very well, and thus the pro- 
gramme of the revolutionary leaders is still, as it has been 
throughout, in direct opposition to the wishes of the people. 

If any doubt on this point still remains, if the history 
of the World Revolution related in this book does not 
prove that the revolutionary movement for the last 140 
years has been the work of a conspiracy whose aims are 
entirely unconnected with the interests and demands of 
the people, how are we to account for the following unde- 
niable facts? 

1 . That although the grievances of the people through- 
out this period have varied according to the changing 
conditions of our civilization, the programme of the social 
revolution has never varied. For if the succeeding out- 
breaks had been made by the people each would have been 
distinguished by different war-cries, different aims arising 
from the exigencies of the moment; instead of this each 
outbreak has been carried on to the same slogans, has 
repeated the same catch-words, and each has been 
directly copied from the earliest — and until 1917 the 
most successful — attempt, the first French Revolution. 
— 2. That the leaders of the movement have never, in a 
single instance, been men of the people, but always mem- 
bers of the upper or middle classes who could not by any 
possibility be regarded as victims of oppression. And if 
it is objected that these men were disinterested fanatics 
fighting in a cause that was not their own, then — 

3. That, with rare exceptions such as Louis Blanc, 
they invariably displayed complete unconcern for the 
sufferings of the people, and a total disregard for human 
life. No instance has ever been recorded of pity or sym- 
pathy displayed by the Terrorists of France towards any 
individual members of the working-classes; on the con- 
trary, they turned a deaf ear to all complaints. The 
Marxists and Bakuninists mutually accused each other 
of regarding the people as " cannon fodder." 
^ 4. That each outbreak has occurred not when the 
cause of the people was hopeless but on the eve of great 
reforms. 

5. That each has been followed not by reform but by 



294 WORLD REVOLUTION 

a period of reaction. For twenty years after the first 
French Revolution the very word " reform " could hardly 
be breathed even in England. 

6. That in spite of the fact that each outbreak has 
thus thrown back the cause of the people, each has been 
represented to the people as a step forward and further 
revolutions have been advocated. 

The revolutionary movement of 1776 to the present 
day is therefore the work of a continuous conspiracy work- 
ing for its own ends and against the interests of the 

people. 

• •••••• 

But now we come to the further question — who are 
the modern Illuminati, the authors of the plot? What is 
their ultimate object in wishing to destroy civilization? 
What do they hope to gain by it? It is this apparent 
absence of motive, this seemingly aimless campaign of 
destruction carried on by the Bolsheviks of Russia, that 
has led many people to believe in the theory of a Jewish 
conspiracy to destroy Christianity. And indeed, if one 
examines the present regime of Russia apart from the 
revolutionary movement of the last 140 years, this pro- 
vides a very conclusive solution to the problem. To the 
unprejudiced observer Bolshevism in Russia may well 
appear to be a wholly Jewish movement. 

For many years before the present revolution the Jews, 
had played a leading part in the forces of disruption in that 
country. The correspondent of The Times at Odessa in 
1905 described the riots that took place there at the end of 
October when " excited Jewish factory girls donned red 
blouses and ribbons and openly flaunted them in the faces 
of the Cossacks." Out of a population of 430,000 inhabit- 
ants over one-third were Jews, and about 15,000 took 
part in the rioting. " The main part of these demonstra- 
tors were students and Jews; . . . excited Jews unblush- 
ingly exhibited Republican emblems," red flags were 
unfurled, the Russian national flag was dishonoured by 
having all colour except the strip of red torn from it, the 
Emperor's portrait was mutilated. In the fight that ensued 
over 400 Jews and 500 Christians were killed. The writer 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 295 

of this article further showed the demonstration to have 
been organized at headquarters; " amongst other Social- 
istic fraternities the Central Jewish organization located in 
Switzerland sent emissaries from its branches in Warsaw 
and Poland to Odessa." x 

Mr. Wickham Steed, in his book The Hapsburg Mon- 
archy, quotes a letter written in this same year of 1905 by 
a semi- Jew on the question of the Jews in Hungary, in 
which this remarkable passage occurs: 

There is a Jewish question and this terrible race means not 
only to master one of the grandest warrior nations in the world, 
but it means, and is consciously striving, to enter the lists 
against the other great race of the north (the Russians), the only 
one that has hitherto stood between it and its goal of world- 
power. Am I wrong? Tell me. For already England and France 
are, if not actually dominated by Jews, very nearly so, while the 
United States, by the hands of those whose grip they are igno- 
rant of, are slowly but surely yielding to that international and 
insidious hegemony. Remember that I am half a Jew by blood, 
but that in all I have power to be I am not. 2 

Twelve years later this prophecy was terribly fulfilled. 
For, whatever the Jewish Press may say to the contrary, 
the preponderance of Jews amongst the Bolsheviks of both 
Hungary and Russia has been too evident to need further 
proof. The Executive of the Communist Government 
established in Hungary in March 1919 consisted in a 
Directorate of Five which included four Jews — Bela Kun, 
Bela Vago, Sigmund Kunn, and Joseph Pogany. The 
Secretary was another Jew — Alpari. Szamuelly, also a 
Jew, was the head of the Terrorist troops. 3 In Russia Jews 
have again predominated. An article in The Times for 
March 29, 1919, stated that: 

Of the twenty or thirty commissaries or leaders who provide 

1 The Times for- November 22, 1905, article entitled " The Reign of 
Terror at "Odessa." The Chief Rabbi Gaster wrote in The Times of Novem- 
ber 25 to contradict these statements, but brought forward no proofs to 
the contrary. 

8 The Hapsburg Monarchy (1913), p. 169. " In Austria-Hungary," the 
author observes on p. 155, " the spread of Socialism has been largely the 
result of Jewish propaganda. Dr. Victor Adler, the founder and leader 
of the Austrian party, is a Jew, as are many of his followers. In Hungary 
the party was also founded and inspired by the Jews." 

3 See the pamphlet, In the Grip of the Terror, by Lumen, printed by 
Jordan Gaskell. Agents, W. H. Smith & Son, 186 Strand. 



296 WORLD REVOLUTION 

the central machinery of the Bolshevist movement not less than 
75 per cent are Jews. . . .If Lenin is the brains' of the move- 
ment, the Jews provide the executive officers. Of the leading 
commissaries, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kameneff, Stekloff, SverdlofI, 
Uritsky, Joffe, Rakovsky, Radek, Menjinsky, Larin, Bronski, 
Zaalkind, Volodarsky, PetrofT, Litvinoff, 1 Smirdovitch, and 
•Vovrowsky are all of the Jewish race, while among the minor 
Soviet officials the number is legion. 2 

In fact the Jewish Press has on occasions admitted this 
influence in Bolshevism. Thus in The Communist, a news- 
paper published in Kharkoff (number for April 12, 1919), 
we find Mr. M. Cohan boasting that, 

. . . without exaggeration, it may be said that the great Russian 
social revolution was indeed accomplished by the hands of the 
Jews. ... It is true that there are no Jews in the ranks of the 
Red Army as far as privates are concerned, but in the com- 
mittees and in Soviet organizations, as Commissars, the Jews 
are gallantly leading the masses of the Russian proletariat to 
victory. . . . The symbol of Jewry, which for centuries has 
struggled against capitalism, has become also the symbol of the 
Russian proletariat, which can be seen even in the face of the 
adoption of the Red five-pointed star, which in former times, as 
it is well known, was "the symbol of Zionism and Jewry. 3 

t , ru u,V >^ j r>^.i* <.»-,&> F ^\ 
This star from the beginning of the Bolshevik revolution 

has decorated the caps of Lenin's guards. 

Even in England the activities of Jews are clearly evi- 
dent in the Bolshevik camp; the audiences at " red flag 
meetings " have been observed to contain a very large 
Jewish element, Jewish interrupters have been sent to 
shout down speakers at patriotic meetings, Jewish agi- 
tators have taken part in every riot and urged young 
British hooligans to violence, and, according to the admis- 
sion of the Daily Herald, a very large number of its 
readers are Jews. 4 The Jewish Chronicle has in fact frankly 
declared that " there is much in the fact of Bolshevism 
itself, in the fact that so many Jews are Bolsheviks, in the 

1 A prominent member of the Jewish Bund in 1907 and Bolshevist 
" ambassador " to England. 

2 On this point see the remarkable pamphlet, Who rules Russia? 
published by the Association Unity of Russia, 121 East 7th Street, New 
York (1920), where the exact names and number of Jews in the different 
departments of the present Russian Government are given. 

3 Quoted in American edition of The Protocols, p. 88. 

4 Letter to the Morning Post from George P. Mudge, Aug. 31, 1920. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 297 

fact that the ideals of Bolshevism at many points are con- 
sonant with the finest ideals of Judaism." * 

In the face of all this overwhelming evidence on the 
r61e of the Jews in the revolutionary movement, what 
wonder that the amazing Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 
first published in Russian by Sergye Nilus in 1902 2 and in 
English under the title of The Jewish Peril in 1920, came 
as a revelation and appeared to provide the clue to the 
otherwise insoluble problem of Bolshevism? Here was the 
whole explanation — a conspiracy of the Jewish race that 
began perhaps at Golgotha, that hid itself behind the 
ritual of Freemasonry, that provided the driving force 
behind the succeeding revolutionary upheavals, that 
inspired the sombre hatred of Marx, the malignant fury 
of Trotzky, and all this with the fixed and unalterable 
purpose of destroying that Christianity which is hateful 
to it. Is this theory true? Possibly. But in the opinion 
of the present writer it has not been proved — it does not 
provide the whole key to the mystery. 

The only way in which the truth can be reached is by 
scientific investigation. And the first step in the process 
of establishing the authenticity or non-authenticity of the 
famous Protocols is to endeavour to trace their origin. 
Now to any one familiar with the language of Secret 
Societies the ideas set forth in the Protocols are not new; 
on the contrary, many passages have a strange ring of 
familiarity. To the present writer the thought that 
recurred at every page was: " Where have I read that 
before? "< and by degrees the conviction grew: " But this is 
simply Illuminism! " So striking, indeed, are certain 
analogies not only between the code of Weishaupt and the 
Protocols, but between the Protocols and later Secret 
Societies, continuations of the Illuminati, that a continuity 
of idea throughout the movement becomes apparent. The 
following parallels may prove of interest as evidence of the 
theory that the Protocols are founded on much earlier 
models : 

1 Article entitled " Peace, War, and Bolshevism," April 4, 1919. 

2 The copy in the British Museum is dated 1905, but there is said to 
have been an earlier edition in 1902. 



298 



WORLD REVOLUTION 



Protocols 

He who wants to rule must 
have recourse to cunning and 
hypocrisy (p. 3). 

We must not stop short before 
bribery, deceit, and treachery, if 
these are to serve the achieve- 
ment of our cause (p. 6.). 

The end justifies the means. 
In making our plans we must 
pay attention not so much to 
what is good and moral, as to 
what is necessary and profitable 
(P. 4). 



With the Press we will deal 
in the following manner. . . . We 
will harness it and will guide it 
with firm reins; we will also have 
to gain control of all other pub- 
lishing firms ... (p. 40). 

All news is received by a few 
agencies, in which it is centralized 
from all parts of the world. 
When we attain power these 
agencies will belong to us entirely 
and will only publish such news 
as we allow ... (p. 40). 

No one desirous of attacking 
us with his pen would find a 
publisher . . . (p. 42). 

Our programme will induce a 
third part of the populace to 
watch the remainder from a pure 
sense of duty and from the prin- 
ciple of voluntary government 
service. Then it will not be con- 
sidered dishonourable to be a spy; 
on the contrary, it will be regarded 
as praiseworthy (p. 65). 

We will transform the univer- 
sities and reconstruct them ac- 
cording to our own plans. The 



Illuminism 

(Weishaupt, 1776-1786) 

Apply yourselves to the art of 
counterfeit, to hiding and mask- 
ing yourselves in observing others 
(Barruel, iii. 27, Original schrif ten, 
p. 40). 



' The end sanctifies the means. 
The goodj/of the Order justifies 
calumnies, poisonings, murders, 
perjuries, treasons, rebellions; 
briefly, all that the prejudices 
of men call crimes (Barruel, iv. 
182, 189, quoting evidence of 
Cossandey, Utzshcneider, and 
Grunberger). 

We must take care that our 
writers be well puffed and that 
the reviewers do not depreciate 
them; therefore we must endeavour 
by every means to gain over the 
reviewers and journalists; and we 
must also try to gain the book- 
sellers, who in time will see it is 
their interest to side with us 
(Robison, p. 191). 

If a writer publishes anything 
that attracts notice, and is in 
itself just, but does not accord 
with our plan, we must endeavour 
to win him over or decry him 
(Robison, p. 194). 

Every person shall be made a 
spy on another and on all around 
him (Spartacus to Cato; Robison. 
p. 135). 



We must acquire the direction 
of education — of church manage- 
ment — of the professorial chair 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 



299 



Protocols 

heads of the universities and 
their professors will be specially 
prepared by means of elaborate 
secret programmes of action. . . . 
They will be very carefully nom- 
inated, etc. (p. 60). 

We intend to appear as though 
we were the liberators of the 
labouring man. . . . We shall sug- 
gest to him to join the ranks 
of our armies of Socialists, Anar- 
chists, and Communists. The 
latter we always patronize, pre- 
tending to help them out of fra- 
ternal principle and the general 
interest of humanity evoked by 
our socialistic masonry (p. 12). 

In the so-considered leading 
countries we have circulated an 
insane, dirty, and disgusting liter- 
ature (p. 49). 



Illuminism 
and of the pulpit . . . 
p. 191). 



(Robison, 



Our Sovereign must be irre- 
proachable (p. 86). 



In the place of existing govern- 
ments we will place a monster, 
which will be called the Adminis- 
tration of the Super-government. 
Its hands will be outstretched 
like far-reaching pincers, and it 
will have such an organization 
at its disposal that it will not 
possibly be able to fail in sub- 
duing all countries (p. 22). 

Our International Super-govern- 
ment (p. 28). 



We must preach the warmest 
concern for humanity and make 
people indifferent to all other 
relations (Robison, p. 191). 

We must win the common 
people in every comer (Robison 
p. 194). 



We must try to obtain an 

influence ... in the printing- 
houses, booksellers' shops. . . . 
Painting and engraving are highly 
worth our care (Robison, p. 196. 
Note adds: " They were strongly 
suspected of having published 
some scandalous caricatures and 
some very immoral prints. They 
scrupled at no means, however 
base, for corrupting the nation.") 

An Illuminated Regent shall be 
one of the most perfect of men. 
He shall be prudent, foreseeing, 
astute, irreproachable (Instruction 
B. for the grade of Regent). 

It is necessary to establish a 
universal regime of domination, 
a form of government that will 
spread out over the whole world 
. . . (Barruel, iii. 97). 



300 



WORLD REVOLUTION 



Protocols 

We will destroy the family 
life of the Gentiles ... (p. 31). 

We will also distract them by 
various kinds of amusement, games, 
pastimes, passions, public houses, 
etc. (p. 47). 



The people of the Christians, 
bewildered by alcohol, their youths 
turned crazy by classics and early 
debauchery, to which they have 
been instigated by our agents, . . . 
by our women in places of amuse- 
ment — to the latter I add the so- 
called " society women " — then- 
voluntary followers in corruption 
and luxury (p. 5).i 



Haute Vente Romaine 
(1822-1848) 

The essential thing is to isolate 
a man from his family, to make 
him lose his morals. ... He 
loves the long conversations of 
the cafes and the idleness of 
shows. . . . After having shown 
him how painful are his duties 
you will excite in him the idea 
of another existence (Piccolo 
Tigre to the Vente Piemontaise; 
Cr£tineau-Joly, ii, 120). 

Let us . . . never cease to cor- 
rupt . . . but let us popularize 
vice amongst the multitude. 
Let us cause them to draw it in 
by their five senses, to drink it 
in, to be saturated with it. . . . It 
is corruption en masse that we 
have undertaken . . . (Vindex to 
Nubius; Cr6tineau-Joly, ii. 147). 



The masonic lodge throughout 
the world unconsciously acts as 
a mask for our purpose (p. 16). 



Most people who enter secret 
societies are adventurers, who 
want somehow to make their 
way in life, and who are not 
seriously minded. With such 
people it will be easy for us to 
pursue our object, and we will 
make them set our machinery in 
motion (p. 52). 



We employ in our service 
people of all opinions and all 
parties; men desiring to re- 



It is upon the lodges that we 
count to double our ranks. They 
form, without knowing it, our 
preparatory novitiate (Piccolo 
Tigre to the Vente Supreme; 
Cr£tineau-Joly, ii. 120). 

This vanity of the citizen or ot 
the bourgeois for being enrolled 
in Freemasonry is something so 
banal and so universal that I am 
always full of admiration for 
human stupidity. .. . . (The lodges) 
launch amidst their feastings 
thundering anathemas against in- 
tolerance and persecution. This is 
positively more than we require 
to make adepts (Piccolo Tigre to 
Nubius). 

Princes of a sovereign house 
and those who have not the 
legitimate hope of being kings 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 



301 



Protocols 

establish monarchies, Socialists, 
etc. (p. 28). 



We have taken great care to 
discredit the clergy of the Gen- 
tiles in the eyes of the people, and 
thus have succeeded in injuring 
their mission, which could have 
been very much in our way. 
The influence of the clergy on the 
people is diminishing daily. To- 
day freedom of religion prevails 
everywhere, but the time is only 
a few years off when Christianity 
will fall to pieces altogether 
(p. 64). 



We must extract the very 
conception of God from the 
minds of the Christians . . . 
(p. 17). 

We must destroy all professions 
of faith (p. 48). 



Protocols 

We persuaded the Gentiles 
that Liberalism would bring 
them to a kingdom of reason 
(p. 14). 

We injected the poison of Liber- 
alism into the organism of the 
State ... (p. 33). 

We preach Liberalism to the 
Gentiles ... (p. 55). 



Haute Vente Romaine 

by the grace of God, all wish to be 
kings by the grace of a Revolu- 
tion. The Duke of Orleans is a 
Freemason. A prince who has 
not a kingdom to expect is a good 
fortune for us (Piccolo Tigre to 
Nubius). 

There is a certain portion of 
the clergy that nibbles at the 
bait of our doctrines with a 
marvellous vivacity . . . (Nubius 
to Volpe; Cr£tineau - Joly, ii. 
130). 

It is corruption en masse that 
we have undertaken: the cor- 
ruption of the people by the 
clergy and the corruption of the 
clergy by themselves, the cor- 
ruption that ought to enable us 
one day to put the Church in her 
tomb (Vindex to Nubius; Cr£- 
tineau-Joly, ii, 147). 

Our final end is . . . the de- 
struction for ever of Catholicism 
and even of the Christian idea 
(Dillon, The War of Antichrist, 
etc., p. 64). 

In order to kill the old world 
surely we have held that we must 
stifle the Catholic and Christian 
germ (Piccolo Tigre to Nubius; 
Cr^tineau-Joly, ii. 387). 

Alliance Sociale 
Democratique 
(Bakunin's Secret Society, 
1864-1869) 
The fourth category of people 
to be employed thus described by 
Bakunin: " Various ambitious 
men in the service of the State 
and Liberals of different shades. 
With them one can conspire 
according to their own pro- 
gramme, pretending to follow 
them blindly." 



302 



WORLD REVOLUTION 



Protocols 

We will entrust these impor- 
tant posts (government posts) to 
people whose record and char- 
acters are so bad as to form a 
gulf between the nation and them- 
selves, and to such people who, 
in case they disobey our orders, 
may expect judgment and im- 
prisonment. And all this is with 
the object that they should defend 
our interests until the last breath 
has passed out of their bodies 

(p. 26).. ;:;•' z ': r : rr> ::n:" 

We will pre-arrange for the 
election of . . . presidents whose 
past record is marked with some 
" Panama Scandal " or other shady 
hidden transaction (p. 34). 



Alliance Soctale 
Democratique 

The third category of Bakunin 
thus described: " A great num- 
ber of highly placed animals who 
can be exploited in all possible 
ways. We must circumvent 
them, outwit them, and by get- 
ting hold of their dirty secrets 
make of them our slaves. By 
this means their power, their 
connections, their influence, and 
their riches will become an inex- 
haustible treasure and a precious 
help in various enterprises. . . " 

In the same way with the 
fourth category: " We must take 
them in our hands, get hold of 
their secrets, compromise them 
completely in such a way that 
retreat will be impossible to them." 



Out of governments we made 
arenas on which party wars are 
fought out. . . . Insuppressible 
babblers transformed parliament- 
ary and administrative meetings 
into debating meetings. Auda- 
cious journalists and impudent 
pamphleteers are continually at- 
tacking the administrative powers 
(p. ID. 



The fifth category of Bakunin 
consists of: " Doctrinaires, con- 
spirators, revolutionaries, all those 
who babble at meetings and on 
paper. We must push them and 
draw them on unceasingly into 
practical and perilous mani- 
festations which will have the 
result of making the majority of 
them disappear whilst making a 
few amongst them real revolu- 
tionaries." 



We will create a ~ universal 
economical crisis. . . .* Simulta- 
neously we will throw on to the 
streets huge crowds of workmen 
throughout Europe. These masses 
will then gladly throw them- 
selves upon and shed the blood 
of those of whom, in their 
ignorance, they have been jealous 



W The Association will employ all 
its means and all its power to 
increase and augment evils and 
misfortunes which must at last 
wear out the patience of the 
people and excite them to an 
insurrection en masse. 



1 Marx was evidently in this secret. In Reflexions sur la violence 
(P. 183) Georges Sorel says: " Marx thought the great catastrophe^would 
be preceded by an enormous economic crisis." 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 



303 



In the first place must be de- 
stroyed the men who are most 
pernicious to revolutionary organ- 
ization and whose violence and 
sudden death may most frighten 
the government. 



^Protocols Alliance Socials 
. Democratique 

from childhood, and whose belong- 
ings they will then be able to 
plunder (p. 14). 

We will make merciless use of 
executions with regard to all 
who may take up arms against 
the establishment of our power 
(p. 50). 

We must take no account of 
the numerous victims who will 
have to be sacrificed in order to 
obtain future prosperity (p. 51). 

The masonic lodge throughout My friends, " abandon that 

the world unconsciously acts as absurd idea that I have been 
a mask ,f or our purpose (p. 16). won over to Freemasonry. But 

perhaps Freemasonry would serve 
as a mask or as a passport . . . 
(Letter to Herzen and OgarerT, 
Correspondance de Bakounine, 
209). 

^Through all these parallels the plan of World Revolu- 
tion runs like a " complot suivi" and when we further 
compare them with the utterances of the modern Bol- 
sheviks we see the plan carried right up to the present 
moment. 'Let us now consider how the Protocols of the 
Elders of Zion tally with the Bolshevist programme: 

Protocols Bolshevism 



'It is expedient for the welfare 
of the country that the govern- 
ment of the same should be in 
the hands of one responsible per- 
son (p. 5). 

The system of government must 
be the work of one head. 

The despotism of capital which 
is entirely in our hands will hold 
out to it (the State) a straw, to 
which the State will be unavoid- 
ably compelled to cling . . . 
(p. 2.). 

On the ruins of natural and 
hereditary^ aristocracy we built 



K How can" we secure strict unity 
of will? By subjecting the will 
of thousands to the will of one 
(Lenin, The Soviets at Work, 
P-.35). 



What is the first stage? It is 
the transfer of power to the 
capitalist class. Up to the March 
Revolution of 1917 power in 
Russia was in the hands of one 
ancient class, the feudalist- 
aristocratic - landowning class, 
headed by Nicholas Romanov 



304 



WORLD REVOLUTION 



Protocols 

an aristocracy of our -own on a 
plutocratic basis. We established 
this new aristocracy on wealth, 
of which we had control . . . 
(p. 8). 

Soon we will start organizing 
great monopolies — reservoirs of 
colossal wealth ... (p. 22). 



Our government is in so exceed- 
ingly strong a position in the 
sight of the law that we may 
almost describe it by the power- 
ful expression of dictatorship 
(p. 27). 

When we accomplish our coup 
d'Etat, we will say to the people: 
11 Everything has been going 
very badly; all of you have 
suffered; now we are destroying 
the cause of your sufferings — that 
is to say, nationalities, frontiers, 
and national currencies. Cer- 
tainly you will be free to con- 
demn us, but can your judgment 
be fair if you pronounce it before 
you have had experience of what 
we can do for your good ?" 
(p. 31). 



Our laws will be short, clear, 
and concise, requiring no inter- 
pretation, so that everybody will 
be able to know them inside out. 
The main feature in them will be 
the obedience required towards 
authority, and this respect for 
authority will be carried to a 
very high pitch. 

Then all kinds of abuse will 
cease, because everybody will 



Bolshevism 

After that revolution, power has 
been in the hands of a different, 
a new class, namely, the capitalist 
class (the bourgeoisie) (Lenin, 
Towards Soviets, p. 8). 

We must improve and regulate 
the State monopolies . . . which 
we have already established, and 
thereby prepare for State monop- 
olization of the foreign trade 
(Lenin, The Soviets at Work, 
P. 20). 

We advocate a merciless dicta- 
torship (Lenin, The Soviets at 
Work, p. 40). 



We must study the peculiari- 
ties of the highly difficult and 
new road to Socialism without 
concealing our mistakes and 
weaknesses. We must try to 
overcome our deficiencies in time 
{The Soviets at Work, p. 18). 

What we have already decreed 
is yet far from adequate realiza- 
tion, and the main problem of 
today consists precisely in con- 
centrating all efforts upon the 
actual, practical realization of 
the reforms which have already 
become the law, but have not 
yet become a reality {ibid. p. 20). 

Economic improvement depends 
on higher discipline of the toilers. 
... To learn how to work — this 
problem the Soviet authority should 
present to the people in all its com- 
prehensiveness {The Soviets at Work, 
p. 26). 



The revolution . . . demands 
the absolute . submission of the 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 



305 



Protocols 
be responsible before the one 
supreme power, namely, that of 
the sovereign (p. 56). 

We will make it clear to every- 
one that freedom does not con- 
sist in dissoluteness or in the 
right of doing whatever people 
please. . . . We will teach the 
world that true freedom consists 
only in the inviolability of a 
man's person and of his property, 
who honestly adheres to all the 
laws of social life (p. 83). 

In order to demonstrate our 
enslavement of the Gentile gov- 
ernments in Europe we will show 
our power to one of them by 
means of crimes of violence, that 
is to say, by a reign of terror 
(p. 25). 



We must destroy all profes- 
sions of faith (p. 48). 



When the time comes for us 
to take special police measures 
by putting the present Russian 
system of the Okhrana in force 
. . . (P 67). 



Bolshevism 
masses to the single will of those 
who direct the labour process 
{The Soviets at Work, p. 35). 

It mustt take some time before 
the ordinary representative of 
the masses will not only see . . . 
but come to feel that he must not 
just simply seize, grab, snatch — 
and that leads to greater dis- 
organization {The Soviets at Work, 
p. 36). 



We will turn our hearts into 
steel, which we will temper in the 
fire of suffering and the blood of 
the fighters for freedom. We will 
make our hearts cruel, hard, and 
immovable, so that no mercy will 
enter into them, and so that they 
will not quiver at the sight of a 
sea of enemy blood, etc. (Krasnaya 
Gazette, the official organ of the 
Petrograd Soviet of Workers, Red 
Army, and peasants' deputies, 
presided over by Zinovieff, alias 
Apfelbaum, a Jew. Date of August 
31, 1918). 1 , 

Religion must be fought, if not 
by violence, at all events by argu- 
ment (Bucharin, Programme of the 
World Revolution, p. 77). 

A highly organized intelligence 
department, or rather the renewed 
Okhrana of the old autocracy, 
is a necessary part of . . . this 
regime. Lenin was perfectly right 
to emphasize this before the last 
Soviet conference in Moscow 
(Dec. 1919) (Miliukov in The New 
Russia for February 12, 1920). 



1 Quoted in American edition of the Protocols, p. 89. Nine years 
earlier M. Copin Albancelli, in his Conjuration juive contre le monde chretien 
(p. 452), had written: "France has known — and she has forgotten! — 
the regime of the Masonic Terror. She will know, and the world will know 
with her, the regime of the Jewish Terror." 



306 WORLD REVOLUTION 

The foregoing parallels prove, therefore, a clear con- 
nection between the Protocols and former Secret Societies 
working for World Revolution, and also between the Pro- 
tocols and Bolshevism. But they do not necessarily 
establish their authenticity. One possibility immediately 
suggests itself. Might they not be a forgery compounded 
by some one versed in the lore of Secret Societies? Sup- 
posing Nilus to have been a student of this subject and 
also, as he was known to be, a pronounced anti-Semite, it 
would not have been difficult for him to reconstruct the 
programme of World Revolution from earlier models, 
weaving into them at the same time the idea of a Jewish 
conspiracy. Why, then, was this very obvious explanation 
not put forward by the Jews? Why, on the contrary, when 
it was suggested by the present writer in a newspaper 
article, did it meet merely with resentment? Here was a 
loophole indeed! But instead of using it the advocates of 
Jewry contented themselves with angry expostulations, or 
fell back on absurd explanations, as that the Protocols 
were invented by the Russian police or by the " Tzarist 
reactionaries " in London, or that they were copied from a 
notorious forgery by Goedsche — why choose a forgery 
when such admirable authentic models were at hand? — or 
again, the attempt was made to draw a red herring across 
the track by dwelling on Nilus' s personality and his own 
literary work, which had no bearing whatever on the 
question. The point was to prove whether the document 
which he purported to have discovered was genuine or not. 

The truth is, then, that the Protocols have never been 
refuted, and the futility of the so-called refutations pub- 
lished, as also the fact of their temporary suppression, 
have done more to convince the public of their authen- 
ticity than all the anti-Semite writings on the subject put 
together. 

The only line of defence, namely, that this document 
was the work of illuminized Freemasonry, and not of a 
purely Jewish association, has been rejected by the advo- 
cates of the Jews themselves, and the only conclusion that 
we can draw is either that the Protocols are genuine and 
what they pretend to be, or that these advocates put 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 307 

iorward by the Jews Have some interest in concealing the 
activities of Secret Societies in the past. 

The question then arises: Were the Jews concerned in 
the organization of Illuminism and its subsequent develop- 
ments? At present this is not clearly proved. It is true 
that Cagliostro was probably a Jew, that Kolmer who 
partly indoctrinated Weishaupt may have been a Jew, that 
a certain Simonini wrote to the Abbe Barruel in 1806 
declaring that " the freemasons and the illumines were 
founded by two Jews " — whose names the author has 
forgotten ! — that the Jewish financiers of Frankfurt may 
have contributed to the funds of the Ihuminati or of the 
Due d' Orleans, but all this rests so far on no contemporary 
documentary evidence. The " illumines " referred to by 
Simonini may well have been the Martinistes founded, as 
it is known, by the Jew Paschalis and frequently referred to 
under this name. We should require more than such vague 
assertions to refute the evidence of men who, like Barruel 
and Robison, devoted exhaustive study to the subject and 
attributed the whole plan of the Illuminati and its fulfil- 
ment in the French Revolution to German brains. Neither 
Weishaupt, Knigge, nor any of the ostensible founders of 
Illuminism were Jews; moreover, as we have seen, Jews 
were excluded from the association except by special 
permission. 2 None of the leading revolutionaries of France 
were Jews, nor were the members of the conspiracy of 
Babeuf. 

The claim of the " Elders of Zion " to have inspired all 
revolutionary outbreaks since 1789 is not therefore at 
present substantiated by history, and it is not until the 
Alta Vendita from 1820 onwards that they can be proved 
to have taken an active part in the movement. Yet 
Monsignor Dillon, who clearly recognizes their importance 
as agents of this secret society, nevertheless attributes its 
efficient organization to " Italian genius." From this date 

1 Deschamps, Les Societes secretes, hi. 659. 

8 Since these words were written, and at the moment of this book 
going to press, a number of La Veille France has appeared (date of March 
31-April 6, 1921) in which it is stated that five Jews were concerned in the 
organization and inspiration of the Illuminati — Wessely, Moses Mendels- 
sohn, and the bankers Itzig, Friedlander, and Meyer. But the contem- 
porary authority for this statement is not given. 



308 WORLD REVOLUTION 

onward their role is, however, more apparent. In Germany 
before 1848 Disraeli himself declared them to be taking the 
lead in the revolutionary movement, and with the First 
Internationale they come forward into a blaze of light. 
Henceforth along the line of State Socialism their influence 
is no longer doubtful. 

But whilst the question of Jewish organization from the 
beginning of the World Revolution remains obscure, the 
workings of illuminized Freemasonry are clearly visible. It 
is strange that in the controversy that has raged over the 
Protocols so little attention has been paid to the fact that 
the so-called " Elders of Zion " were admittedly masons of 
the 33rd degree of the Grand Orient. Considered from this 
point of view, all their statements regarding the past his- 
tory of the Revolution are substantiated by facts. For if 
by " we " is meant " illuminized Freemasons," then the 
assertion that " it is we who were the first to cry out to the 
people ' Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity '" is clearly 
accurate. Nothing can be truer than that since the French 
Revolution " the nations have been led from one disap- 
pointment to another," and that " the secrets of its pre- 
paratory organization were the work of our hands " — the 
hands of the Freemasons and Illuminati. If, then, the 
Protocols are genuine, they are the revised programme of 
illuminized Freemasonry formulated by a Jewish lodge of 
the Order. 

But whilst the influence of the Jews cannot be proved 
throughout the early history of the society, German inspi- 
ration and organization is apparent from the very begin- 
ning. It was the German Weishaupt who founded the 
Illuminati with the aid of his German colleagues, it was the 
German Knigge who effected its alliance with French 
Freemasonry, German emissaries who introduced it to the 
lodges of the Grand Orient ; it was this German Illuminism 
that inspired the campaign of universal corruption waged 
by the Alta Vendita and the anarchic fury of Bakunin ; and 
again it was pan- Germanism, working by the methods of 
the Illuminati, that assured the success of Marx and 
Engels and secured control of all Socialist organizations up 
to the present day. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 309 

This revolutionary machine that threatens the peace of 
the world today, though manipulated in the past by men 
of all nationalities — French, Italian, Jewish, Russian, and 
in a few instances English — is primarily the work of 
German hands and is still mainly controlled by Germans 
with the aid of their Jewish allies. The German military 
authorities sent Lenin and the Jew Radek in a special train 
to Russia, German officers organized the Bolshevik armies, 
and German poison gas contributed to the final defeat of 
Wrangel. 

It was also Germany who fanned the flames of civil war 
now raging in Ireland. Sinn Fein, which in its origins was 
largely a national and religious movement, is now being 
exploited by the International Atheist movement, whose 
" dark directory," as in 1884, " laughs at Ireland and her 
wrongs." For the plan of the conspiracy has always been 
to adopt a protege and enlist its aid as an ally. Hitherto the 
two proteges invariably selected have been Ireland and 
Poland. But now that Poland has dared to assert its 
independence Poland has been thrown to the wolves, and 
when the day comes, as it must come if the World Revo- 
lution triumphs, for Ireland to resist the tide of Bolshev- 
ism, then Ireland with all her national and religious 
aspirations will be thrown to the wolves likewise. The 
organization of the revolutionary movement is even now 
less in the hands of Sinn Fein than of the Irish Republican 
Brotherhood, modelled like its predecessors, the Fenians 
and the United Irishmen, on the Illuminati of Weishaupt. 1 
The same organization is at work in India, and both are 
directed, not by Moscow, but by the invisible council which 
holds in its hands the threads of the whole conspiracy. 

Bolshevist propaganda all over the world has been 
carried out by German organization and financed by Ger- 
man as well as by Jewish gold. " I affirm," wrote Bourt- 
zeff, the Russian refugee, " that since August 1914, and in 
a relatively short lapse of time, the Germans handed over 
personally to Lenin more than 70,000,000 marks for the 
organization of Bolshevist agitation in the Allied Coun- 

1 For this reason Sinn Fein will not be found marked in the chart 
accompanying this book. It is not a part of the World Revolution. ( ^>"- 



310 WORLD REVOLUTION 

tries." Bernstein, a member of the German Social Demo- 
cratic Party, has declared in the official organ of the party, 
Vorwdr ts, that he knew as far back as December 1917 that 
Lenin was in the pay of Germany. More recently, Bern- 
stein has learnt from " a responsible person " that the sum 
given to Lenin was more than 50,000,000 gold marks, or 
£2,500,000. 1 The Jewish Bolshevik emissaries to the 
recent Tours Congress, Abramovitch and Clara Zetkin, 
were discovered by the French authorities to have received 
money from Germany for the expenses of propaganda in 
France. The Jewish agitator is the tsetse fly carrying the 
poison germ of Bolshevism from the breeding-ground of 
Germany. 

As long as England retains any belief in Carlyle's 
theory of " noble, patient, deep, pious, and solid Ger- 
many," the true cause of the evils now afflicting Europe 
will never be understood. Doubtless there are noble and 
pious elements in Germany, but let it not be forgotten that 
Germany holds within her a poison centre which has 
become a source of moral infection for the whole world. 
The campaign of militant atheism and moral corruption 
that is now being carried out systematically in our own 
country, in France, and in America, is of German devising. 
Weishaupt in his apology for Illuminism said that "Deism, 
Infidelity, and Atheism were more prevalent in Bavaria 
than in any country he was acquainted with." 2 Seventy 
years later, in 1846, Lord Shaftesbury, travelling in Ger- 
many, remarked: " Here is a peculiarity among the Ger- 
man literati ; professorial chairs are held and public lectures 
given by men of open, acknowledged, and boastful 
Atheism " ; and if we are reminded that Disraeli had 
declared most of these professorial chairs at this date to be 
monopolized by Jews, let us note that Lord Shaftesbury 
goes on to say: " Nor does opinion frown them down. We 
have bad people in England, but few dare to parade their 
make-beliefs with ostentation and joy." 3 German Athe- 

1 Article by Mr. Adolphe Smith, "|Lenin: Russian ^Traitor and German 
Agent," in the National Review for April 1921. The whole of this important 
article, from which the above quotations are taken, should be read care- 
fully. 

2 Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 102. 

1 Edwin Hodder, Life of Lord Shaftesbury, p. 362. 



V 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 311 

ism and Jewish antagonism to Christianity have combined 
to form the great anti-religious force that is making itself 
felt in the world today. 

; y , Again, Internationalism, the policy of national suicide 
advocated by the modern revolutionaries, has been fre- 
quently attributed to the Jews, and it is obvious that a 
race without a country of its own must see in the propaga- 
tion of Internationalism much to commend it; but the 
originator of Internationalist doctrines as they are 
preached today was not a Jew but a German — Anacharsis 
Clootz. The so-called " International Jew " is not in 
reality International at all ; he is firstTa~^ew~arr6r' then a 
German — sometimes indee.cLhe is aJ^Lexman first. 1 Inter- 
nationalism, then, is simply another word for pan-German- 
ism, and it will always be noticed that advocates of Inter- 
nationalism in this country betray a peculiar tendresse for 
Germany. As Mr. Adolphe Smith has well expressed it: 
" The Socialist and revolutionary doctrines . . . taught 
under the mantle of Marxism spread the idea that a 
Socialist has no country unless, of course, he has the good 
fortune to be a German." And again: " The doctrines of 
the older Socialists, the Socialists at whom Bismarck 
aimed by his anti-Socialist law, were now reserved for 
foreign exportation . . . abroad they were just what was 
wanted to disintegrate communities, to weaken the sense 
of nationality, and lessen the desire for strong armies of 
defence. ... In all fields of action the German as an 
Internationalist needs to be studied with far greater care 
than as yet has been bestowed on him." 2 The Interna- 
tional doctrines of Weishaupt and of his disciple Clootz 
have served the cause of Germany well.. 

It will be urged, " But why should Germany encourage 
Illuminism, since she herself is now a victim of World 
Revolution? " True, the Spartacists of Germany today 
are undoubtedly the direct descendants of Spartacus 

1 On March 29, 1913, an influential German-Jewish Association, the 
" Central Society of German Citizens of Jewish Faith," in a strongly anti- 
Zionist resolution, declared: " On the soil of the German Fatherland we 
wish, as Germans, to co-operate in German civilization and to remain 
true to a partnership that has been hallowed by religion and history " 
(Wickham Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy, p. 177). 

2 Adolphe Smith, The Pan-German International, pp. 4, 9, 12. 



312 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Weishaupt from whom they take their name; 1 Liebknecht 
and Rosa Luxembourg were both leading members of the 
Order. Inevitably those who handle poison gas are liable 
at moments to inhale its fumes. But Germany has Spar- 
ticism well under control — meanwhile it can be used as a 
bogey to prevent her disarmament by the Allies. Between 
Berlin and Moscow the understanding is complete. Nicho- 
las Lenin is not the controlling brain of the gigantic con- 
spiracy. Great pains have been taken to represent the 
present dictator of Russia asa" Superman " of vast con- 
ceptions. Lenin's own writings refute this theory. Where 
in all his numerous pamphlets do we find a hint of genius 
or even of original thought? The writings of Robespierre 
bear at least the stamp of his personality. Babeuf , Illum- 
inatus though he was, brought some native inspiration to 
bear on his diatribes, but from the days of Marx onwards 
revolutionary Socialism has always borne the same 
" machine-made " character and Lenin's pamphlets 
resemble nothing so much as the instructions of a bogus 
company promoter directing other would-be bogus com- 
pany promoters how to "do the trick." Mr. Wells has 
hastened to assure us that Lenin's writings are not repre- 
sentative of himself, that the great man must be seen to 
be appreciated; yet how is it that the many ardent pil- 
grims to the shrine of the deity at Moscow have never been 
able to bring back a single phrase uttered by the oracle 
that gives evidence of the slightest gleam of inspiration 
or of concern for the people of Russia? The one point 
that appears to occupy him is how to make the system 
work in spite of the opposition of the people. 

Lenin, then, is neither a demagogue nor a superman, 
but the agent of the great German- Jewish company that 
hopes to rule the world. 

How do the Germans and the Jews come to be allied in 
this design? Are not their aims mutually antagonistic. 
If we regard the Jewish plan asa racial conspiracy — yes. 
But there is no evidence to show that the whole Jewish 
race is concerned in it ; on the contrary, many Jews in our 

1 On this point see Weltfreimaurerei, Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik, by 
Dr. Wichtl (Munich, 1921), p. 262. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 313 

own country, as in France, have shown themselves fearless 
opponents both of Germany and Bolshevism. Nor does 
religious fanaticism appear to enter into the question. The 
insistence on the idea of a Jewish Messiah is the least 
convincing part of the Protocols. It is not religious Jews, 
even Talmudic Jews, but apostate Jews who have thrown 
themselves into the revolutionary movement. In the 
diatribe of Bucharin against religion quoted above, the 
Jewish faith is derided equally with that of the Christian 
or the Buddhist. Yet if we examine the plan of Bolshev- 
ism we shall see the motive for a certain section of the Jews 
to take part in it. Now the avowed plan of the Bolshevists 
is to do away with the right of private property and 
establish universal Communism. But the ruse of the con- 
spiracy has always been to use words with a double 
meaning, and not only this, but with meanings diametri- 
cally opposed to each other. Thus when they proclaim the 
" dictatorship of the proletariat " their real intention is to 
bring about the complete enslavement of the proletariat; 
when they talk of the " equality of sexes " what they really 
mean is to reduce women to a position lower than the rank 
of squaws. The word " constitution," as we have seen, has 
been employed throughout as the signal for crushing an 
attempt to introduce constitutional government or for 
overthrowing it when it has been established. In the same 
way the word " Communism " has a double meaning. 

To the simple proletarian Communism conveys a very 
alluring idea, namely, that of " having everything in 
common." Of the real theory of Communism he has no 
conception, but the propagandist who tries to win him 
over to Communism knows very well. He knows, more- 
over, that Communism is a system which has been tried 
and in every instance found wanting, and that, on the lines 
which he advocates, can never succeed. 

For the only form of Communism which it has ever 
been possible to carry out successfully is that practised by 
religious communities. Monasteries and nunneries are, of 
course, Communist, but the fact which makes this possible 
is that they are composed of people who have renounced 
all interest in earthly things and centre all their thoughts 



314 WORLD REVOLUTION 

and desires on the Kingdom of Heaven. Secular Com- 
munism, by its insistence on materialism, eliminates the 
only factor that makes the system feasible — belief in God 
and the Hereafter. It is inconceivable that leading Com- 
munists should be unaware of this fundamental error in 
their teaching, or of the failure that has attended every 
attempt to put it into practice in the past — above all, of 
its colossal failure in Russia. 

If, then, Communism or State Socialism has been 
proved impracticable, if, moreover, it is a system that no 
one who understands it can possibly want, who is to profit 
by establishing it ? Sorel answered the question long ago 
— " A few professors who imagine they invented Social- 
ism and a few Dreyfusard financiers." In other words, the 
Intellectuals who cherish the hope of being given official 
posts in the Socialist State which will give them an 
advantage over their fellow-men, and a few Jewish finan- 
ciers. Werner Sombart, summing up the system of the 
latter, says: " Their aim was to seize upon all commerce 
and all production; they had an overpowering desire to 
expand in every direction." The system of free trade was 
all part of this plan and can be traced back as far as 
Anacharsis Clootz, who was doubtless considering the 
interests of his friends the Jews when in his Universal 
Republic he advocated " all the peoples forming one nation, 
all the trades forming only one trade, all interests forming 
only one interest." It is easy to see that State Socialism 
may be merely the prelude to this scheme, and here M. 
Sorel and M. Copin Albancelli are curiously in accord. 

" One formula," the latter wrote in 1909, " sums up the 
whole Collectivist propaganda: All for the State. All for the 
State! The people imagine that this means: All for All! and 
they march forward, intoxicated with hope, towards the con- 
quest of this fallacious idea, not dreaming that the State being 
henceforth in the hands of the Jews ' all for the State ' . . . will 
be ' all for the Jews! ' . . . The dictatorship imposed by 
the Jewish race will be a financial, industrial, and commercial 
dictatorship." l 

What could better describe the government of Russia 

i La Conjuration juive contre le monde chritien, pp. 448, 450. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 315 

today? The plan of wresting all capital out of private 
hands and placing it in the hands of the State, as under 
Communism, or in the hands of industrial syndicates as 
under Syndicalism, may well be the prelude to State 
Capitalism or to gigantic trusts controlled by international 
financiers. In this case the so-called war on capitalism is 
simply a war in favour of capitalism, of ruining all small 
holders of wealth or property in order to enrich a ring of 
multi-millionaries. A passage in Mr. Wells's articles on 
Russia lends colour to this theory: 

Big business is by no means antipathetic to Communism. 
The larger big business grows the more it approximates to 
Collectivism. It is the upper road of the few instead of the 
lower road of the masses to Collectivism. 1 

Conversely, then, may not Communism be the lower 
road which the masses are being invited to follow leading 
to " big business," that is to say, to super-Capitalism? 
Once embarked on this road there can be no turning back. 
The present Capitalist system — that is to say, the system 
that aims at the distribution of capital amongst as large a 
number of hands as possible — having been destroyed by 
the workers' own folly in favour of concentration of 
capital in the hands of the State, they will be obliged to 
work or starve. Their new masters will have them com- 
pletely at their mercy. 

It will be urged: " But the workers will never stand 
this; they will rise against their tyrants and overthrow 
them! What government of this kind could maintain 
itself in power? " 

But this is where the role of the German armies comes 
in. It is quite true that a group of international financiers 
could not of its own strength maintain itself in power 
against an enraged industrial proletariat, but if we 
imagine this financial power backed by a superb military 
system, if, in a word, we picture an alliance between 
Prussian militarism and international finance, the plan no 
longer appears impracticable. 

It is this alliance that today menaces civilization, and 
it is an alliance of long standing, as we have seen in the 

1 Sunday Express for November 28, 1920. 



316 WORLD REVOLUTION 

earlier chapters of this book. The present campaign of 
anti-Semitism raging in Germany is largely a strategic 
manoeuvre with the object of reinstating Germany in the 
eyes of the world and throwing all the blame for both the 
war and the revolution on the Jews. Germany will not 
relinquish her Jews as long as they can help her towards 
the attainment of her dream of world-power. Nor will the 
International Jew forsake Germany as long as by her 
military strength she remains the horse to back. 

Yet, formidable as this coalition may be, does it pro- 
vide the whole force of Bolshevism? The organization — 
yes ; but the force — no. In following the history of World 
Revolution one other factor, an immense factor, must 
be taken into consideration — the power of anarchy. All 
Bolshevists are not Jews or Germans; all are not inspired 
by Jews or Germans. The importance of the constitutional 
destructionist cannot be over-estimated. It is essential to 
recognize that there are men and women in the world who 
will throw themselves into any subversive movement for 
sheer love of violence — it is idle to seek with them a 
motive. This has been so all through the revolutionary 
movement. For although down the line of State Socialism 
the influence of the Germans and the Jews is clearly evi- 
dent, down the line of Anarchy, except for the original 
inspiration of Weishaupt and the agitations of Most and 
Hartmann, it is hardly to be found at all. Bakunin was 
the author of a polemique against the Jews; Sorel was an 
ardent anti-Dreyf usard ; Lev Chorny, the Russian Anar- 
chist, at the beginning of the present revolution warned 
the Russian people against the Jewish leaders of Bolshev- 
ism. If modern Communism, that is to say, Marxian 
Socialism, is German and Jewish, Syndicalism and 
Anarchy are peculiar to the Latin and Slavonic races. It 
was this fearful element that contributed largely to the 
ferocity of Bolshevism, and, exploiting the native ten- 
dency of the Russian people towards violence, could in- 
augurate an orgy of blood and terror. 

Bolshevism uses Syndicalism, like Anarchy, to estab- 
lish its power, it encourages the General Strike, which 
enters in no way into its own programme, but the spirit of 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 317 

Syndicalism exists apart from Bolshevism and is as much to 
be feared. If revolution breaks out in this country it will 
be a Syndicalist revolution — the General Strike with its 
fearful programme of sabotage and violence, its carnival of 
rioting and destruction. But it is not Syndicalism that 
will win the day. The lessons of history prove that 
anarchy, ephemeral in its essence, must always give way 
before organization. And if this organization is not sup- 
plied by the forces of law and order, it will be the iron 
bureaucracy of the German armies and the international 
financiers which will establish its domination over a 
ruined country and a helpless people. 



CONCLUSION 

Bolshevism in England — Our Illuminati — Danger now threatening 
civilization — Methods of defence. 

In the course of this book I have endeavoured to trace the 
workings of the great conspiracy throughout the history 
of the last hundred and forty years; a few concluding 
words are now necessary in order to indicate the manner 
in which it is being carried on in our country at the present 
moment and the means by which it may be defeated. 

It is extraordinary how in the light of Illuminism many 
things that are happening today which appear at first 
inexplicable become clear as daylight ; for not only do the 
six points of Weishaupt form the exact programme of the 
revolutionary party in England, but it would hardly be an 
exaggeration to say that every device now employed by it 
can be traced back to the code of the Illuminati. 

Now it will be remembered that the precept most 
emphasized by Weishaupt was that the Illuminati should 
not be known as such, and after their suppression in 
Bavaria every effort was made by the conspirators to per- 
suade the world that their Order had ceased to exist. As 
the instructions for the degree of Regent expressed it: 
" The great strength of our Order lies in its conceal- 
ment ; let it never appear in any place in its own name, 
but always covered by another name, and another 
occupation." 1 

This device has alway been exactly carried out ; Free- 
masonry, Carbonarism, Socialism, the Internationale, 
have all in turn served as covers to the designs of the con- 
spiracy, and the same method is being followed today. 
Every effort is made to persuade the public that no con- 

1 Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy, p. 195. 
318 



.;.; CONCLUSION 319 

spiracy exists, for once its existence is generally recognized 
its defeat is certain. Its whole success depends on secrecy. 
This much, however, is known. 

The Order of the Illuminati exists in England; its 
statutes are those of the head lodge in Germany, reorgan- 
ized in 1880. At the same time an association called 
Co-masonry, which has its headquarters in Paris and 
derives from the Grand Orient, is also active. By way of 
winning the confidence of the women it is hoped to enlist, 
they are frequently told that the Order has the approval of 
the Grand Lodge of England. This is absolutely untrue. 
British Masonry has repudiated the Grand Orient and 
recognizes no form of masonry that admits women as mem- 
bers, f tfot $0) lluu IVLMj ^/UO^^JSt 14+ ^****~ 

But, according to the planof Weishaupt, the principal 
activities of the conspiracy are conducted " under other 
names and other occupations." The instructions to the 
Regents go on to explain the different guises under which 
one may work. Next to Freemasonry " the form of a 
learned or literary society is best suited to our purpose, 
and had Freemasonry not existed, this cover would have 
been employed; and it may be much more than a cover, 
it may be a powerful engine in our hands. By establishing 
reading societies, and subscription libraries, and taking 
these under our direction, and supplying them through our 
labours, we may turn the public mind which way we will." 
The way in which the necessary literature is to be forced 
on the attention of the public is described in the passage 
already quoted in the parallels to the Protocols: 

We must take care our writers be well puffed and that the 
reviewers do not depreciate them ; therefore we must endeavour 
by every means to gain over the reviewers and journalists; and 
we must also try to gain the booksellers, who in time will see that 
it is their interest to side with us. 

This is exactly what we see happening today. Not 
only have the modern Illuminati succeeded in organizing 
such avowedly subversive " literary societies " as the 
Fabian Society, and other minor associations, but also in 
gaining control over ordinary circulating libraries and 
bookshops, by placing at their head men or women who 




320 WORLD REVOLUTION 

are definitely working for the propagation of revolutionary 
doctrines. At the same time journalists, even in the employ 
of the so-called " Capitalist Press," devote long and 
important notices to every book that is calculated to serve 
the cause — works ranging from heavy treatises on intel- 
lectual Socialism to the lowest form of demoralizing fiction. 
No book subversive of order or morality ever passes 
unnoticed in the press. 

Of course the greater part of this organization is carried 
out by the power of gold — not necessarily by bribery but 
simply by making agitation a " paying job/' or by offering 
the most lucrative posts to adepts or at least agents of the 
conspiracy. But apart from these material advantages 
subtler methods are employed. Of these the two which 
prove the most effectual were thus laid down by Weis- 
haupt : 

1. Exploiting grievances. — Amongst the people to 
enrol are " above all those who have experienced mis- 
fortune, not by mere accidents, but through some kind of 
injustice, that is to say, those that one can most certainly 
count amongst malcontents: those are the men that we 
must call into the bosom of Illuminism as into their 
asylum." * 

2. But by far the most potent inducement offered was 
the promise of power. " The pupils are convinced that the 
Order will rule the world. Every member therefore 
becomes a ruler." Robison quoting this passage adds: 
" We all think ourselves qualified to rule. The difficult 
task is to obey with propriety; but we are honestly gen- 
erous in our prospects of future command. It is therefore 
an alluring thought, both to good and bad men. By this 
lure the Order will spread." 2 

How truly has Robison's prophecy been fulfilled! 
Nothing indeed could better describe the mentality of the 
converts to what is now called " Bolshevism " than these 
two passages. Nearly all the promoters of disorder today 
will be found to be either people suffering from some real 
or imaginary injustice or those with an inordinate desire to 
rule over their fellow-men. They are convinced that if only 

1 Barruel, iii. 35. * Robison's Proofs, p. 213. 



CONCLUSION - 321 

the reins of power were once confided to their hands the 
whole social system would be miraculously transformed; 
they are further convinced that this day must come, for all 
have been taught to believe that " their Order will one day 
rule the world." It is this that gives them their immense 
confidence, for young Oxford Intellectual and Trade Union 
Leader alike has been assured of the important post he is to 
occupy under the coming regime. Neither, of course, has 
been admitted into the real plan of the conspiracy; neither 
probably suspects that any such conspiracy exists, for, 
according to the pyramidical scale of Weishaupt, each is 
acquainted only with the directors immediately above him 
and knows nothing of the higher adepts who are really 
controlling the movement. 

Another motive that undoubtedly drives many people 
into the revolutionary camp is fear. They think that if a 
revolution is to take place in this country they will ensure 
their safety by throwing in their lot with the subversive 
party. Mirabeau, Illuminatus, voiced precisely this policy 
when he said to his followers: " You have nothing to fear 
from the aristocrats ; those people do not pillage, they do 
not burn, they do not assassinate — what harm can they 
do you?" On the policy, therefore, of propitiating a malig- 
nant deity, numbers of timorous people become apologists 
for Bolshevism, imagining that all such utterances will be 
counted to them for righteousness when the " day of con- 
flagration " arrives. Revolutionary violence has been care- 
fully designed to produce this effect, for the method of the 
conspiracy is the same today as it was a hundred and forty 
years ago — " calumny, corruption, and terror." 

But a little knowledge of the history of World Revolu- 
tion would dispel the illusions of those who hope to save 
their heads by cowardly compromise ; it would teach them 
that in times of revolution no one's life is safe, that men 
have never yet been spared on the score of past professions 
of sympathy with subversive doctrines, that on the con- 
trary it has invariably been the less extreme revolution- 
aries who have fared the worst. Demagogues once in 
power need the co-operation of bold and despotic men, and 
these are not to be found amongst the timorous and time- 



322 WORLD REVOLUTION 

servers but amongst the agents of reaction. The French 
Revolution employed the Marquis de Sade but killed off 
the Girondins, and in Russia Social Revolutionaries and 
Mensheviks have perished by the score whilst Tzarist 
officials and members of the Okhrana have occupied 
official posts under the Soviet Government. 

There is nothing, then, to be gained by cowardice, and 
there is much to be lost. _A man who dies for his convic- 
tions can mount the scaffold with serenity, but what must 
be the bitter remorse of those who have sold their souls and 
profited nothing? 

This form of " terrorism," of frightening people into 
siding with one, is peculiarly German. " Sabre-rattling " 
undoubtedly proved a highly effectual method of over- 
coming opposition amongst neutrals during the recent war. 
And the German psychology in the so-called Labour move- 
ment is everywhere apparent today. It is curious to notice 
the organization of illuminized Freemasonry during indus- 
trial crises. " All modern revolutions," wrote Eckert in 
1857, " prove that the Order is divided into two distinct 
parties: one pacific, the other warlike," or, as Monsignor 
Dillon describes them, " the party of direction " and " the 
party of action." At moments of tumult the war party 
descends into the arena whilst the peace party retires into 
the back-ground. " The Pacific lodges hasten by every 
means to protect the brothers of the belligerent division by 
representing them as over-ardent patriots who have 
allowed themselves to be drawn on by the current beyond 
the limits of order and prudence." 

This process is repeated every time a revolutionary 
strike is now threatened, and the so-called moderate 
Labour leaders, whilst dissociating themselves from the 
actual preparation of revolution, give it all the support in 
their power by representing the Extremists as " hot- 
headed " enthusiasts whom it is impossible to restrain but 
whose cause nevertheless is just. The public, always 
deceived by this manoeuvre, falls on the necks of the 
11 moderates," trusting to them to save the situation and 
bring the hot-heads to reason, the truth being that the very 
moderation of the former immensely aids the work of revo- 



CONCLUSION 323 

lution by reconciling those who would be alienated by the 
violence of the Extremists. 

Trade Unionism, in its origins a wholly pacific system 
for the protection of the workers, has thus been captured 
by the conspirators, and the industrial disputes which form 
the ostensible purpose of each succeeding crisis are merely 
pretexts covering the real design of World Revolution. 

Revolution by the General Strike is not the only danger 
to be feared ; State Socialism by the ballot-box will ruin us 
more slowly but none the less surely. For State Socialism, 
with its crushing of all individual enterprise, must inevi- 
tably destroy our commerce, bring about vast unemploy- 
ment and finally bankruptcy and starvation, whilst the 
pro-German sympathies of its leaders will lead to the rup- 
ture of our alliance with France, on which the security of 
both countries depends. At the same time, all measures of 
military and naval defence will be abandoned, national 
traditions will be swept away, Socialist teachers will incul- 
cate anti-patriotism and materialism into the minds of the 
rising generation, and Germany will be able to take over 
the British Empire without an effort. 

The manner in which the women of this country have 
been enlisted in the service of the conspiracy can also be 
traced to illuminized Freemasonry. Just as in the first 
French Revolution the advocates of " Women's Rights " 
were persuaded to throw themselves into the movement, 
so the conspiracy today has succeeded in capturing a large 
proportion of the " Feminist " movement for its purpose 
of general demoralization. The female missionaries who 
recently visited England for the purpose of preaching 
" The Right to Motherhood " — a theory which was of 
course given wide publicity in the Press — were not soli- 
tary enthusiasts who had evolved this theory out of their 
own inner consciousness, but mouthpieces repeating 
a phrase that has long been current in the language of 
illuminized Freemasonry and forms a part of the plan for 
the break up of family life. x 

1 M. Copin Albancelli, writing in 1910, described the campaign being 
carried out by " the Occult Power " for the demoralization of French 
women and children: " All facilities of corruption . . . are offered to 
mothers of families — the family, they go so far as to say, must be destroyed 



324 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Nothing is more extraordinary than the way apparently 
intelligent women have allowed themselves to be drawn 
into a plot of which they will be the chief victims. Women 
have obviously far more to lose than men by the destruc- 
tion or even by a decrease of civilization, whilst the 
Suffragist has everything to lose by the abolition of the 
Parliamentary system which accords her the vote she has 
so long demanded, but the modern Illuminati, following 
Weishaupt's precepts by " flattering their vanity " and 
giving them " hints of emancipation," have succeeded in 
persuading numbers of women to assist in digging their 
own graves. These words of warning written 123 years ago 
might well be laid to heart by the women of our country 
and of America today: 

There is nothing in the whole constitution of the Illuminati 
that strikes me with more horror than the proposals of Hercules 
and Minos to enlist the women in this shocking warfare with all 
that " is good and pure, and lovely, and of good report." They 
could not have fallen on any expedient that will be more effectual 
and fatal. If any of my countrywomen shall honour these 
pages with a reading, I would call on them, in the most earnest 
manner, to consider this as an affair of the utmost importance 
to themselves. I would conjure them, by the regard they have 
for their own dignity and for their rank in society, to join against 
these enemies of human nature and profligate degraders of their 
sex; and I would assure them that the present state of things 
almost puts it in their power to be the saviours of the world. 
But if they are remiss, and yield to the seduction, they will fall 
from that high state to which they have arisen in Christian 
Europe and again sink into that insignificancy or slavery in 
which the sex is found in all ages and countries out of the hearing 
of Christianity. 

For as Robison truly adds: 

Woman is indebted to Christianity alone for the high rank 
she holds in society. ... It is undoubtedly Christianity that 
has set woman on her throne. . . . 

If not only Christianity but all religion is to be 
destroyed, then indeed women will sink to a condition 
which Robison describes as lower than a " Mahomedan 
paradise." 

. . . prostitution is honoured . . . conferences are held in its temples 
(of the Grand Orient) on free maternity {la libre maternite) " (Le Pouvoir 
occulte contre la France, pp. 417, 418). 



CONCLUSION 325 

But even more horrible than the degradation of women 
is the systematic demoralization of children which is 
now being carried out by the conspiracy. The plan of 
Weishaupt for obtaining influence in the schools has been 
followed by the establishment of Socialist Sunday Schools, 
attended, it is said, by no less than 10,000 children in the 
United Kingdom, where the poison of class-hatred, of 
greed, and of materialism is sedulously instilled into the 
child-mind. 

At the same time, still following faithfully in the foot- 
steps of Weishaupt, our Illuminati are careful to win the 
sympathy of " those who have a hankering for religion," 
by telling off a few of their number to profess the doctrines 
of Christian Socialism. Thus Mr. Lansbury, returning 
from the land whose Government has adopted as its 
motto, " Religion is opium to the people," where the 
churches have been desecrated and Christians crucified 
for their faith, proclaims in the same breath his allegiance 
to Christ and Lenin. Bebel, the German Socialist, was 
more honest when he declared: " Christianity and Social- 
ism stand towards each other as fire and water." Yet in 
the face of such declarations we find a dignitary of the 
Church of England proclaiming that " if Christ came to 
earth today He would be a Bolshevik." Can we not hear 
again the exulting tones of Weishaupt saying, " The most 
admirable thing of all is that great Protestant and reformed 
theologians who belong to our Order really believe they 
see in it the true and genuine mind of the Christian religion. 
Oh! man, what cannot you be brought to believe! " 

Not amongst the Protestant clergy alone is this strange 
delusion to be found; Catholics likewise have allowed 
themselves to be blinded to the real forces at work behind 
the troubles in Ireland. Have they forgotten the warnings 
of their eloquent predecessor the Abbe Barruel? Do they 
forget the prophecy of Cardinal Manning, now so terribly 
fulfilled: " On the day when all the armies of Europe will 
be engaged in an immense conflict, then, that day, the 
revolution which until now has been working secretly 
underground will have found the favourable moment to 
show itself in the light of day " ? 



326 WORLD REVOLUTION 

Cardinal Manning repeatedly warned his generation of 
the danger of Secret Societies; Monsignor Dillon still more 
clearly indicated the nature of the formidable sect that 
was to bring about this consummation, and also the occult 
force behind it : 

" We only want a knowledge of the evil to avoid it . . . 
all secret societies aiming at bad and irreligious ends are 
no other than deadly illuminated Freemasonry. Let them 
be called by whatever name, they are a part of the system 
of revolutionary fraud, invented and cast upon earth by 
Satan to compass the ruin of souls and the destruction of 
the reign of Jesus Christ." The final end is "..to form, and 
that before very many years, the vast kingdom of anti- 
Christ, which already spreads its ramifications over the 
whole earth." Only by a realization of this truth can the 
true meaning of the World Revolution be understood. 
Neither greed of gold nor power, neither political nor social 
theories, however subversive, could alone have produced 
the unspeakable horrors, the moral perversion, the far 
more than bestial cruelties that have marked its course. 
The description of " bloody baboonery " applied to Bol- 
shevist atrocities is unjust to apes. Beasts may wound and 
kill — they do not torture, do not gloat over the sufferings 
of their victims; savages may do these things, but even 
they content themselves with torturing the body, they do 
not set out to destroy the soul. The spirit of evil that finds 
expression in the defilement and desecration of sacred 
things, in the systematic destruction of all nobility, all 
decency of thought and life, above all, in the poisoning of 
the child-mind, can be explained by no natural laws or 
mere human passions. 

Let us not forget that the cult of Satan which flourished 
in Bavaria at the same time as Illuminism, and was in 
all probability connected with it, is practised today in 
our own country. The powers exercised by the modern 
Illuminati are occult powers and range from hypnotism to 
black magic, which, since the days of the magician Cagli- 
ostro, have always formed part of the stock-in-trade of the 
sect. It is therefore no fantastic theory but the literal 
truth to say that the present world crisis is a conflict 



CONCLUSION 327 

between the powers of good and evil. Chnstianitv^is a 
beleaguered citadel surrounded by the dark forces, which 
have mustered for the supreme onslaught. Only in one 
way can it be withstood. The words of Joseph de Maistre, 
who, like Barruel, regarded the French Revolution merely 
as the first stage in the campaign, must be taken as the 
battle-cry of the White Army today: " The French Revo- 
lution is Satanic in its principle and can be only really 
killed, exterminated, and finished by the contrary prin- 
ciple." (" La Revolution francaise est satanique dans son 
principe et ne peut 6tre vraiment tuee, exterminee, finie 
que par le principe contraire.") The Christian principle — 
that is the force that must be opposed to the Satanic 
power of the World Revolution. 

It is because England, with all her shortcomings, in 
spite of the recent betrayal of her traditions in the compact 
entered into with the Bolsheviks by her politicians, in 
spite of the attempts to poison the life-blood of her people 
with alien germs of corruption, yet remains the stronghold 
of Christian civilization, that the conspiracy has made her 
the principal point of attack. If England goes the whole 
world goes with her. Marx knew this when he said: 
" Every revolution that does not spread to England is a 
storm in a tea-cup." And it was also Marx who uttered the 
cry of despair: * England is the rock on which revolution- 
ary waves are broken! " Is that rock at last to be over- 
whelmed? Not if we hold fast to the same principle that 
has saved us in the past. It is recorded that the Comte 
de Provence when in England during the French Revolu- 
tion " said to one of the gentlemen about him, that ' if 
this country was to escape the general wreck of nations, 
it would owe its preservation to religion.' " After the 
revolution of 1848 a Frenchman observed to Lord Shaftes- 
bury: "You have been saved by the religion of your 
people." And today Lenin has declared the greatest 
obstacle to the success of Bolshevism in England to be 
the fact that the English working-man founds his ideas 
upon the Bible. 

If the people of our country will but realize the 
diabolical nature of the conspiracy at work amongst them, 



328 WORLD REVOLUTION 

the powers of Hell cannot prevail against us. In igno- 
rance and indifference lie our principal danger. Every 
outbreak of the World Revolution that has so far occurred 
has been rendered possible by the apathy of the nation in 
general. Let the words of Barruel, uttered in the face of 
the same peril a hundred and twenty-five years ago, ring in 
our ears today : 

Cease to natter yourselves. The danger is certain, it is 
continual, it is terrible, it threatens you all without exception. 
Keep yourselves, however, from giving way to that kind of 
terror which is only cowardice and discouragement ; for, with all 
the certainty of the danger, I say to you none the less: " Will to 
be saved and you will be saved. . . . One cannot triumph over a 
nation that resolves to defend itself. Know how to will as they 
do and you will have nothing more to fear from them." 

Illuminism is mustering all its forces for a supreme 
onslaught in our own country at the present moment. But 
the nation at heart is sound and has resolved to defend 
itself. Is it possible that this little island of ours is finally 
to stem the tide of World Revolution and save not only 
herself but Christian civilization? 



THE END 



2, l/JiAtU 



